Whatcha Been Playing?

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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KSubzero1000 »

I've put a few hours into Dangerous Driving. I like it so far, although it has quite a few rough edges.


The Bad:

Production values are really low, which isn't really a problem for me in a gameplay-centric game but might be an issue for some. Menus, fonts, etc.. are all very simplistic.

The game has minor visibility issues thanks to the camera being a tad lower than it should be with only two pre-programmed positions and no option to manually fine-tune it while driving. I've crashed into several vehicles I had no way of knowing were even in my path.

The traffic sometimes skips along the road, almost like players with poor internet connections. Really weird glitch, although not game-breaking.

The physics engine sometimes just pulls a complete non sequitur out of its back pocket.

No real OST except for the one menu theme. There is the option to link to your Spotify account, but other than that, you're better off just listening to music or a podcast on a different device.

Biggest disappointment is the absence of proper semi-secret shortcuts on the tracks themselves. The added layer of risk-vs.-reward they provide always gives Burnout the extra replayability and strategy factor that other racing games lack. I hope I'm missing them or that they're reserved for the later tracks...


The Good:

Event variety is excellent, with plenty of different types of challenges that don't overstay their welcome.

The general handling of the cars is very enjoyable. When the stars align, it feels like Burnout. Which is wonderful.

Takedowns work pretty much the way they should.

The different types of cars within one category all fulfill a different niche (one is robust but slow, one has great boost refill, one is super fast but really fragile, etc...), which is a lot more engaging than just slightly faster variations of the same car. It helps to think about which type of car you're choosing before starting an event.

Boost system is back from Burnout 2 (!).


If the beginning is anything to go by, I think it's worth its budget price overall. Just about. For a 7-person dev team and a shoestring budget, it's definitely playable. But don't expect the full-blown, engine-roaring glory of either Burnout 3 or 4.
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JaySevenZero
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by JaySevenZero »

ThirdMan wrote: April 9th, 2019, 5:54 pm Also, as a quick aside, one of the most active members when I joined was Todinho. I really miss his contributions, particularly concerning RPGs. Anyone know what he's up to these days?
No idea, but that's what happens when you get booted out of this forum for being a misogynist dick.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

KSubzero1000 wrote: April 9th, 2019, 4:47 pm The game has minor visibility issues thanks to the camera being a tad lower than it should be...
That's a real niggle for me and has spoiled more than one driving game. Need For Speed Most Wanted is one I remember. I generally play the in car, or at least front bumper view, and it really does make the game so much harder when you can't see what's coming up very easily.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

ThirdMan wrote: April 9th, 2019, 7:17 pm
JaySevenZero wrote: April 9th, 2019, 6:03 pm
ThirdMan wrote: April 9th, 2019, 5:54 pm Also, as a quick aside, one of the most active members when I joined was Todinho. I really miss his contributions, particularly concerning RPGs. Anyone know what he's up to these days?
No idea, but that's what happens when you get booted out of this forum for being a misogynist dick.
Ah, I see. Didn't realise.
I posed the same question a while back - check about halfway down the page.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=77&start=560
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

I forgot how difficult it was on MGS 3 to totally be unseen. Coupled with the fact it takes so long for the enemy to kill you so you can restart, or going back to the main menu and reloading your save, it's quite frustrating! I remember absolutely loving it when I played it for the first time about four years ago though, so not giving up!
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Scrustle
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Scrustle »

Picked up Dangerous Driving. Finally, after all these years of having nothing even remotely like a new Burnout, this comes along to scratch that long unsatisfied itch. First impressions are really positive. I'm enjoying it a lot so far. I've got through all of the Sedan class events, and almost all the SUV class events too. In terms of the sense of speed and handling, it's fantastic. More or less as close to the original Burnout games as you could expect. It's not quite perfect, as there's a bit of jank with how the physics act sometimes, and I'd prefer if the drift was a bit more visually exaggerated, but the cars feel ultra grippy and responsive, just as you would expect they would, and I found it pretty intuitive to pick up. It recreates the thrill of insanely high speeds and twitchy cornering really well. Fighting your way through the pack, smashing and taking out opponents feels great too. It feels chaotic and aggressive, but still predictable and under control. Takedowns are still really fun, even if the damage modelling isn't anywhere near as robust as in the old games. I can also confirm that there is no vertical takedown in this game too, which is a little bit of a shame. But regardless, actually racing feels fantastic, and is just what I was hoping for.

It is pretty rough around the edges though, which isn't that surprising. Aside for the aforementioned physics quirks, like sometimes sending your car flying off in an odd way if you hit a bank strangely, the game is kind of buggy. There was one event I had to restart multiple times because my car crashed as soon as the race loaded in, before I had even hit the button to start the event. Caused some weirdness that forced me to go back to the main menu to fix. A couple of times I've also been placed on the track after doing a takedown with traffic right in front of me that I couldn't avoid, and one time the game crashed my car while it was controlling it during a takedown cutscene. Those problems have been rare so far, so they don't spoil the game, but it's still some pretty bad oversights that do affect the game in a way that shouldn't happen. The visuals too are a bit rough, at least with the environment design. Background look pretty sparse and lifeless, and foliage looks kind of ugly. There are a few nice set pieces though, and you fly through tracks so fast it doesn't really matter. I've heard people talk about visibility being a problem with the game, and I can kind of see what they might be getting at, but I didn't have that problem myself. Although I got the impression it was the lighting that was obscuring vision, not the way the camera is placed. The game is rather fond of putting the extremely bright sun right in your eyes on certain tracks, and filling the screen with lens flare effects, etc. It's got that sort of default Unreal 4 look to it that you might see in Youtube videos of people messing around with the engine. I don't think the effects look bad though. They are just kind of overdone in a few spots.

Oh, and in the end I did go for the physical PS4 version. It turns out that you actually can use your own custom music in the background without having to sign up for Spotify on that version. While it is a little disappointing that the game doesn't have a soundtrack of its own, I've actually been having a lot of fun racing to my own playlist I made, full of upbeat and fast-tempo stuff, even including some of the Burnout 1 and 2 soundtracks in there as well. It fits really well. The similarities with Foza Horizon 3's custom soundtrack are a fun coincidence. Not only do/did they both do it through streaming, they both try to get you to sign up for a completely unnecessary subscription and don't mention you can use your own music. It must be a conspiracy!!!

Also played a bit of Forza Horizon 4, relevance being they just put out another significant update. The biggest things they added this time was an addition to the livery editor, now letting you create a layer mask, and the addition of a new mode; Drift Adventure. The layer mask thing may seem like a small change, but I'm sure that will make a big difference to people who put a lot of time in to the livery editor, and will facilitate even more great designs. Since the game doesn't allow you to colour vinyls in certain finishes, this will let people do way more in creating cut-outs that let the metallic and flip paint colours show through in more complex designs.

Drift Adventure is the first simultaneous competitive drift mode that's ever been in the Horizon games, and being that's what I do most of my time in these games anyway, I was eager to try it out. It works by giving players a set time limit to lap around a track and score as many drift points in a single lap, with the best individual lap deciding who wins. They also run it in a championship style format, where you do three events in a row and score points in each event to decide your overall placement at the end of the championship. I've had a handful of goes at it now, and I like it in concept, but the way they limit what car you can use is pretty annoying. They separate out AWD and RWD cars, as well as having a number of different performance classes for each. In the time I've played it, I've only come across the RWD events once. Which is a pain because that's the only version I really want to play. I didn't even get the performance class I wanted either. You don't get a choice what event type you get. So from what it looks like, the chances that I'll ever get to play this mode the way I want looks pretty slim.

They also added a couple of other changes to how multiplayer works, but since I don't usually bother with it, I didn't find them as interesting. They've now removed collisions from the first 30 seconds of every online race. I suppose it makes sense to do, as the first corner in any online racing game is always notoriously a clusterfuck, but this seems like way too drastic of a way to fix that. And maybe that it takes something away from racing that shouldn't be removed. But I don't know what to think. It's obviously an extremely hard problem to solve, given how prevalent it is in racing games. Another change is that they removed the Freeroam Rush sections from all tarmac-based Adventure modes. Those being events that existed between races in the championship-like Adventure modes this game has, where you had to drive through the open world to where the next race started, with your position arriving counting towards your final point total. That's a big change for the better, but I doubt I'll make much use of it. I never really liked those modes, although Freeroam Rush was a big reason why.

Watching how this game has been changing over time has got me thinking about the nature of service games. Since I don't play them in general, I'm not confident in applying it to all games like this, but watching how this game has unfolded has painted this picture of a game that is kind of its own worst enemy. While the constant tweaks and additions keeps the game relevant and always giving you something new to engage with, there's always this sense that it can never be enough. They can fix old problems, but they often introduce new ones as well. And new content and rewards often tend to feel a bit underwhelming, that lends to this kind of resentment of wanting more. Yet ironically, if the game wasn't always adding more like this, that desire wouldn't be anywhere near as strong. It feels like maybe because they're iterating so rapidly, and doing updates so frequently, they can never really have the time to make any individual update properly satisfying in its own right. So while the new stuff to play is fun, the fact that there's only so much they can do in the time given, and the expectations of players that they know more is on the way, there's this sense that the thing we have now is sort of an obligation, and whatever is coming next is what we've really been waiting for. Yet it never comes. So it builds up this hostility, which is amplified by these games often having a very open dialogue between developers and players, which I suspect is a big factor in why so many games like this have pretty toxic communities. That's not to say I'm feeling resentful at the game myself. Some changes, or lack thereof, are sometimes frustrating, but generally I've been persistently enjoying the game. And the fact that there's no microtransactions probably helps the game feel a lot more fun than it otherwise might. But I've seen some people who act really horribly about the game, with some really entitled attitudes expressed in a gross way. A way that seems new to this series.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KSubzero1000 »

Scrustle wrote: April 10th, 2019, 7:26 pm Picked up Dangerous Driving. Finally, after all these years of having nothing even remotely like a new Burnout, this comes along to scratch that long unsatisfied itch. First impressions are really positive.
Cool! I'm curious, though. What do you make of the absence of proper semi-hidden shortcuts and alternative routes on the tracks? Have you discovered any?
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Scrustle
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Scrustle »

KSubzero1000 wrote: April 10th, 2019, 7:38 pm
Cool! I'm curious, though. What do you make of the absence of proper semi-hidden shortcuts and alternative routes on the tracks? Have you discovered any?
I haven't spotted any. It wasn't something I was even thinking about playing. The tracks all seem pretty walled in from what I can tell. So far every track has had crash barriers around the whole track. Sometimes the lanes split off for a little bit, but it's not really a shortcut. But it doesn't seem like something the game is lacking in any way. The tracks are fine as they are.

And it's to be expected to a degree. The game is obviously pretty low-budget and simple in construction. As is evident in the bland scenery. But it's forgivable I think. It's refreshingly straight-forward in a way that suits this sort of game really well. And it does things right where it really counts.
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dezm0nd
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by dezm0nd »

It really feels like Burnout 2 with modes and takedowns from 3. The crash physics are a bit off but doesnt harm the game and the handling is very close but feels a little bit like the wheels have been greased up.

Ultimately its a very good burnout like and i can really see a positive future for the series despite the awful title
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Suits
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Suits »

Played Yoshi’s Crafted World tonight.

I’ve finished the main story and I’m now on the ‘Mop Up’ which going back and collecting all the bits and bobs.

But tonight I played it, undocked, on its stand with the two Joy-Con in my hand while I watched the football on TV, it was rad.

I don’t think I’ve ever really played it like that, in such a chilled way, it really suited the low intensity collectathon while I focussed on the football and played along.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

I started Vampyr back up after a good 6-month hiatus, and you know what? This is a bloody excellent game. No pun intended. It's got one of the better dialogue systems I've seen in a while (leagues better than Fallout 4 - think Mass Effect meets LA Noire) and while the combat can feel a little cheap (it's very similar to Bloodborne insofar as you have a stamina meter and an "Oh shit" dodge move you're expected to spam), the gameplay overall is quite refined and surprisingly diverse.

But the best part, I feel, is the core mechanic... Basically, the more you get to befriend and understand a character, the more XP you'll get for harvesting their blood. But any time you kill a human, their district falls further and further into anarchy, blocking off dialogue options and increasing the pressure human enemies put on you, making it harder to stealth around.

So it leads to this really interesting scenario where you're woefully underleveled if you choose to kill no one, but killing everyone limits the story and makes it harder to get around. Plus you'll have the sunken cost fallacy of working hard to make a character like you, only to off them. I'm trying to be selective and only kill characters I think London would be better without, but as you unlock hints about each character, the more sympathetic they become... It's really quite genius, and I'm very surprised this game was so badly overlooked. It's a must-play, IMHO. I imported it from the UK for like $30 *last year* (it still cost $80 in Canada at the time), so I imagine it's dirt cheap for the Eurofolk. I recently saw it *on sale* in Canada for $50, so I presume maybe it bombed across the pond or something.
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dezm0nd
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by dezm0nd »

Played and built the Labo VR headset. Will do the blaster tonight.

The micro experiences are exactly that but they're pretty neat for demonstrating how it all works.

Holding a headset constantly is a pain in the ar...m but holding a joycon to manipulate some games was a genuine surprise. Playing a couple of the tech demos which require you to hold the Switch with joycons attached worked remarkably well and i cant wait to see what Mario and Zelda have in store for us.
Sure its a bit blurry and I've gof micro bits of cardboard on my lenses but for something i thought was impoasible, this put a smile on my face in a very Nintendo like fashion
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Flabyo
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Flabyo »

Vampyr is on gamepass if you have that, by the way.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

Well that's just prime. If you got a XBone, go download the hell outta Vampyr. Y'all won't regret it.
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Pitwar
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Pitwar »

I think my last bash at Sekiro last Friday night has killed my love of gaming.

Since that night I've not had the inclination to play anything, and can't think of one game on the horizon that I'm looking forward to.

Sekiro is just too much for me, it's too stressful and not an enjoyable experience, and somehow it's put a hobby I've loved since the early 80's on the shelf. I felt drained after that last session, and just glum in a way no game has ever made me feel. Very weird.
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Chopper
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Chopper »

That is terrifying to hear :shock:

Hopefully with a bit of downtime you'll be able to get back to gaming.
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dezm0nd
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by dezm0nd »

Here's some gaming medicine

SUPER
MONKEY
BALL
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by KSubzero1000 »

Not so much "whatcha been playing?" but "whatcha been buying?", but I just grabbed Vampyr for a very reasonable price based on the local word of mouth around here. Curious to dive into it at some point.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

Pitwar wrote: April 12th, 2019, 2:13 pm I think my last bash at Sekiro last Friday night has killed my love of gaming.

Since that night I've not had the inclination to play anything, and can't think of one game on the horizon that I'm looking forward to.

Sekiro is just too much for me, it's too stressful and not an enjoyable experience, and somehow it's put a hobby I've loved since the early 80's on the shelf. I felt drained after that last session, and just glum in a way no game has ever made me feel. Very weird.
I had the exact same experience with Bloodborne. But I played a few narrative-focused games with minimal gameplay over the next few days, and I got sorted right back out.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Magical_Isopod »

I want to recommend the following underappreciated and little-known indie games to everyone, because I love them:
- Albino Lullaby
- Simulacra
- Near Death
- Wuppo
- Freedom Planet
- Valley

That is all, thank your for your time. Look them up if you crave something off the beaten path.
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