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Started by Keef Monkey, 11 June, 2011, 09:35:35 AM

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Professor Bear

Days Gone is like if Assassin's Creed: Origins and The Last Of Us had a baby but without the good controls and if all the text was too tiny to read and important tutorial instructions on how to deal with impassable in-game barriers only appeared onscreen for about three seconds before disappearing forever, not even being stored in one of the menus somewhere, which are accessed in a stupid "swipe up/down/left/right one the touch pad for maps/inventory/story/skills" thing that I hate and quickly realised was also unnecessary.
This is what happens when games eat themselves - everything is swiped from somewhere else, but not as good as where it's been nicked from, which isn't so bad when you're talking about something like the shitty photo mode, but the controls - geez, did I miss a memo about all games abandoning the idea of just hitting a button once to do something so now instead you have to hold down the button and then wait and see if your character does the interaction animation?  It was a minor irritation in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, but here it's really fucking annoying, and contributes to a sense of unresponsive controls.  Another niggle is when you're near two different things which both use the same button to interact with: most commonly this will be a recently-killed enemy you can search for ammo or scrap and who was carrying a weapon that is almost certainly inferior to the one you're carrying, so instead of searching him for items you end up swapping one of your useful primary weapons for an inferior one - and this happens all the time in the game, would it have killed them to let you pick up weapons and items with different buttons?  You use the X button for absolutely nothing as it is during combat.  The "survival wheel" is also juuuust annoyingly imprecise enough to make selecting some things really annoying, and while you swap to some items permanently, other items you only swap to them for one use, particularly the rock you use to attract/distract enemies.  Setting objects on the ground also seems to be impossible, so you have to throw things to stop carrying them, which is great in a game with stealth mechanics.
Also: the stealth mechanics are not very good.
I frustration-quit this after a few days, as all it did was remind me that I never finished the much-better Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.

JamesC

Quote from: Professor Bear on 30 April, 2019, 11:06:20 AM
Days Gone is like if Assassin's Creed: Origins and The Last Of Us had a baby but without the good controls and if all the text was too tiny to read and important tutorial instructions on how to deal with impassable in-game barriers only appeared onscreen for about three seconds before disappearing forever, not even being stored in one of the menus somewhere, which are accessed in a stupid "swipe up/down/left/right one the touch pad for maps/inventory/story/skills" thing that I hate and quickly realised was also unnecessary.
This is what happens when games eat themselves - everything is swiped from somewhere else, but not as good as where it's been nicked from, which isn't so bad when you're talking about something like the shitty photo mode, but the controls - geez, did I miss a memo about all games abandoning the idea of just hitting a button once to do something so now instead you have to hold down the button and then wait and see if your character does the interaction animation?  It was a minor irritation in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, but here it's really fucking annoying, and contributes to a sense of unresponsive controls.  Another niggle is when you're near two different things which both use the same button to interact with: most commonly this will be a recently-killed enemy you can search for ammo or scrap and who was carrying a weapon that is almost certainly inferior to the one you're carrying, so instead of searching him for items you end up swapping one of your useful primary weapons for an inferior one - and this happens all the time in the game, would it have killed them to let you pick up weapons and items with different buttons?  You use the X button for absolutely nothing as it is during combat.  The "survival wheel" is also juuuust annoyingly imprecise enough to make selecting some things really annoying, and while you swap to some items permanently, other items you only swap to them for one use, particularly the rock you use to attract/distract enemies.  Setting objects on the ground also seems to be impossible, so you have to throw things to stop carrying them, which is great in a game with stealth mechanics.
Also: the stealth mechanics are not very good.
I frustration-quit this after a few days, as all it did was remind me that I never finished the much-better Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.

I was intrigued by this game after seeing a couple of high-production-value TV ads but this sounds awful.
I like my games to be FUN and quickly get annoyed by silly mechanics that get in the way. I never even liked the 'search' mechanic in the first place to be honest. What's the point? Just have the items pop up and run into them to pick them up - as long as the weapon doesn't auto-swap it works fine.

Dr Feeley Good

Started playing Strange Brigade seeing as it was on Xbox game pass, was enjoying it until it started cheating me out of achievements, about 8 haven't popped now! Don't know what it is about Rebellion games, had the same trouble with one of the Sniper Elite games and Zombie Army Trilogy was terrible for it...  :(

Professor Bear

Quote from: JamesC on 30 April, 2019, 12:21:03 PM
I like my games to be FUN and quickly get annoyed by silly mechanics that get in the way. I never even liked the 'search' mechanic in the first place to be honest. What's the point? Just have the items pop up and run into them to pick them up - as long as the weapon doesn't auto-swap it works fine.

I couldn't shake the notion that everything had been tailored to replicate online multiplayer game mechanics - the most noticeable being that you can't use the pause menus or inventories to craft things, you have to do it "in-game" via a fiddly wheel - but I also forgot to mention the incredibly long loading times not just when the game initialises, but when a cut-scene starts, and then there are long loading times within the cut scene itself as it loads up different areas of the game map in which the cut-scene/flashbacks take place, and while you can skip some of the cut-scenes, you can't skip others, and there are often sections where you have to follow other characters around while they talk to you, or sections on rails where you can only move the camera around while characters talk to you.  After one such scene, I was in the middle of a large settlement area with only one way out that I couldn't actually find on the game map, so I just had to drive around this fiddly area for ages running out of petrol for my bike.
I get the feeling this might be very playable if they overhaul it based on player feedback, but as it is, I can't go near it again until some of its most egregious faults are addressed in a patch (it is also occasionally very buggy).  It currently just feels like a game made entirely of rough edges.

Keef Monkey

After loving Far Cry 3&4 and not really enjoying 5 anywhere near as much I assumed I just didn't have any hunger for more Far Cry, but realized I only ever got about an hour into Far Cry 2 so fired it up just to see how that feels now. Wound up totally hooked and played through the whole thing over the last couple of weeks. It's brilliant! It's showing its age for sure but it's still dripping with atmosphere, feels really oppressive and hostile in a way that now seems quite ahead of its time now that some of the more survival-ish elements are more common-place. Also, I know fire propagation is still very much a thing in Far Cry games but it feels way more exciting and dangerous in this, all that dry grass going up during a gunfight really adds to the drama.

Glad I finally went back to it, cracking game.

Apestrife

Hellblade: Senua's sacrifice Amazing game. Never played anything like it. Playing as a celt warrior woman with a psychosis fighting through viking hell in order to save her loved one. Constantly bombarded with voices, looking for symbols in the enviroment (which may come off as a bit tedious, but very fitting for her character), making sense of a fractured reality and fighting monsters. Wasn't as scary as I thought nor as epic as I hoped, but at the same time it didn't have to. It was an amazing and interesting experience. One hard to shake off.

Can be mentioned that I played it on my Switch, and it really shines. Only downsides being it taking up 18gb of space (definitely going to buy a micro SD card soon) and being quite noticeably downgraded graphicly in some areas, with the resolution making it look a bit hazy.

A trailer if anyone's interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7Ir5icRsZ0

Keef Monkey

Quote from: Apestrife on 06 May, 2019, 08:35:17 PM
Hellblade: Senua's sacrifice Amazing game. Never played anything like it.

Yup, loved this too. The performance is fantastic and it was a really unique game that really stuck with me.

GrudgeJohnDeed

I found the voices in Senua's head incredibly unsettling, almost difficult to play at times! Glad I got through it though, very unique game.

Far Cry 2 is best Far Cry.

HdE

Quote from: Apestrife on 06 May, 2019, 08:35:17 PM
Hellblade: Senua's sacrifice Amazing game. Never played anything like it.

No word of a lie - that game made proper emotional mincemeat out of me. I think it may have one of the all time great video game endings. Absolutely loved it!
Check out my DA page! Point! Laugh!
http://hde2009.deviantart.com/

wedgeski

Quote from: Keef Monkey on 07 May, 2019, 10:19:39 AM
Quote from: Apestrife on 06 May, 2019, 08:35:17 PM
Hellblade: Senua's sacrifice Amazing game. Never played anything like it.

Yup, loved this too. The performance is fantastic and it was a really unique game that really stuck with me.
I have it, but have not yet felt in the right frame of mind to play it!

I followed the production (the behind the scenes vlogs are outstanding), then read a couple of reviews that made me think I should probably be at peak self before playing it. :)

Keef Monkey

Tried playing through Recore, and it proved a bit too annoying to navigate the world. The gameplay itself feels fine (other than some extremely fiddly platforming) and if I could just have barreled through the story I'd probably have seen it through, but progress was being gated behind 'backtrack and collect more orbs' style barriers, and actually getting around and reaching the places you're trying to backtrack to proved pretty unenjoyable so I decided to shelf it and move on.

It's rare I don't see a game through once I'm a couple of hours in, and some of the design has a lot of charm (the robots are adorable) so it pains me to do it, but I just wasn't enjoying my time with it enough to keep going.

Dr Feeley Good

Finally finished Strange Brigade, did enjoy it, managed to get all the achievements it cheated me out of by doing the levels again in co-op. Bought Metro Exodus today and am going to start that next..

Apestrife

#2292
Quote from: wedgeski on 08 May, 2019, 09:19:06 AM
Quote from: Keef Monkey on 07 May, 2019, 10:19:39 AM
Quote from: Apestrife on 06 May, 2019, 08:35:17 PM
Hellblade: Senua's sacrifice Amazing game. Never played anything like it.

Yup, loved this too. The performance is fantastic and it was a really unique game that really stuck with me.
I have it, but have not yet felt in the right frame of mind to play it!

I followed the production (the behind the scenes vlogs are outstanding), then read a couple of reviews that made me think I should probably be at peak self before playing it. :)

Been a while since I played it, so I can safely say it's a game which has stayed with me. The pain the main character Senua is in is probably the most affecting one's I've felt in art since Laura Palmer's.

Been playing Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. Found it for cheap on gog.com. Fond memories of playing the demo as a child. The fuel station level. Quite good. A very speedy 90s fps with some levels which are quite tricky to find your way out of. Also there's lightsabers and force powers. Biggest downer I think is the quite samey levels. Really enjoyed it's ambition with full motion cinemas between levels and constant use of Star wars tunes. Quite okay, but I remember the sequel being a bit better. Especially with the lightsaber action.

Blood. Played alot of Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior when I was young, but never Blood. Wish I did. I really really enjoy it. The weapons you get to use are really different, flare guns, sticks of dynamite, voodoo dolls and so on, and the level design is really good. Finding the last key usually gives you a short cut to the next door, instead of a bunch of back tracking. The main character is really weird and freaky to boot. He starts laughing like a maniac when things are exploding only to say something really creepy the next second, kicking zombie heads when you pass over them. Feels like a FPS directed by John Carpenter. Hard not to recommend! 

Keef Monkey

Recently finished Mars: War Logs, it's a wee sci-fi RPG which wears it's low budget on its sleeve (the voice acting in particular is really poor) but I got sucked in and had a pretty good time with it. Think it was less than a quid when I bought it so the fact I enjoyed it a fair bit means I more than got my money's worth!

Dr Feeley Good

Nearly finished Metro Exodus, really enjoyed it, it's more like a cut down Fallout this time instead of being very linear. My only faults are the amount of bugs and crashes, you've really got to remember to make quick saves every so often. The last couple of levels have been spoilt a little bit because my character has lost his hands! No matter what gun you have it just floats in the air! It's quite a common glitch apparently and the only way around it is ditching your save and starting the game again...  :'(