I played it with coop mates (via game pass IIRC), all EGS fans since Oblivion, well after 76 was released and patched up, and it was just… boring. And grindy. Yet kept trying to upsell us stuff. I kinda get how some like the game with those BGS environments, but that was still a shock to me.
Starfield did nothing either. I watched YT story videos/tried the intro out of a friend’s Steam library instead of buying and felt like I was looking at a AI slop Skyrim mod, both technically and in terms of writing. Again, I’m a hardcore fan going way back, warts, glitches and all.
It’s remarkable the studio has fallen so far, without basically changing anything, yet still has such a loyal following. How is that even possible?
Fallout 1 - exceptional world-building, fantastic game, great character writing, superbly replayable RPG. Your build is instrumental to what you can do; decisions affect the world. Held together by jank and bugs, alas, but generally superb.
Fallout 2 - fixes most of the jank and bugs and has a much bigger and deeper world, but not quite as well-integrated a story. Worthy sequel, though.
Fallout 3 - “Oblivion with guns”, but has a pretty decent story, lots of interesting side quests. Seems like Bethesda misunderstood the point of the setting a bit, but very promising. Has some RPG replayability - different builds and different choices change what’s available in the world.
Fallout New Vegas - best game in the whole series. Good plot, great sidequests, great characters, reactive world. Actually makes it seem like the Creation engine can be used for ‘proper’ RPGs - everything by Bethesda tended to be a mile wide and an inch deep up till then. Obsidian actually understand the setting, which is not surprising since they had a lot of original Black Isle devs in their team. Held together by jank and bugs, which I’m going to pretend was a callback to Fallout 1.
Fallout 4 - just what the fuck. Plot that you can barely believe is as stupid as it is. One-note, irritating characters. Dreadful writing. Gives up being an RPG in favour of crafting and base-building. “Talking” interface which was the butt of jokes at the time and an insult to the history of the series. Barely any decision is of consequence, you could save near the “final decision” point, see all the endings, and miss nothing of consequence. All of Bethesda’s worst habits, given free rein.
Not going to be spending money with Bethesda again unless the reviews turn up exceptional. After F4, I was expecting nothing from 76, and was not surprised. Was expecting nothing from Starfield, and was not surprised. Am expecting Elder Scrolls 5 to be a bag of shite as well - am whatever the complete opposite of ‘hyped’ is for it.
I think the rose tinted glasses effect is strong. Fallout 4 wasn’t that bad and had some neat characters and sidequests. I played heavily modded NV too, and while great, has plenty of missed beats and slow quests.
Also, making a (mostly) top down, tight text game is very different than producing a voice acted, sprawling 3D world. It’s like trying to compare the writing quality of a novel vs a 2 part blockbuster movie.
Not that I disagree with the decline, but I think that’s putting it too strong and ignoring huge differences.
For me the technical and artistic of aspects are factors too. Starfield would’ve been unreal if it came out in 2012… but look at its contemporaries. CP2077? KCD2? Even ME Andromeda utterly trounces it in artistic creativity, animation quality, graphics, scripting, performance, HDR quality, combat, even some voice acting; I could go on and on. And it’s basically the same premise.
Yet Starfield feels like modded Skyrim, looks only superficially better, and runs at like a tenth the speed.
One thing that really threw me off FO4 was the voiced main character. They had to simplify the dialogue options significantly, and I just don’t need my character to have a voice, my imagination can sort that out just fine. That way I can make up my own mind about how my character sounds in my head, have more detailed dialogue options (like FO:NV), and not have a locked in boring voice with boring dialogue options. Lots of cool additions in FO4, but it just seemed so shallow, I stopped playing quite early.
It’s how i pick my screenshots. I try to pick ones that arent too obvious but if you know the game you can identify it. Some games are hard to do that on though
The pleasure is all mine! I always try to respond to people, but sometimes fear I don’t have anything important to say. But I love talking with people who comment on my posts
I love the franchise to death. I did a crushing run of Uncharted 4, but I don’t think I could do one of the First 3. It’s like Halo 2 Legendary where everything is an insta kill
Damn. I’m so fucking disappointed I missed that for free. The Nathan Drake collection was my first exposure to this franchise on PS4 and I had to sign into an uncles PSN account every time I wanted to play it
I was thinking of that when I selected the picture lol. Blink is a good episode, albeit it’s not one of my personal favorites. I still respect what it is though
It’s acted out on purpose: if I recall correctly he missed a relatively easy win that could’ve kept him in the fight a bit longer because of an unpunished mistake of GO1. After a minute of desperation, he quickly shifts into proper manner and shakes hands!
I been competing in fighting game tournaments for over a decade. Its a blast, even if you suck. The fighting game community is one of the most welcoming competitive environments I’ve ever been apart of. 10/10, highly recommend.
This. The great thing about fighting games is that today is one of the best times to join: there’s lots of online activity, long past the days in which you needed a local tournament to actually play. You will find a passionate player about literally any fighting game on earth, no matter if it’s an indie title (I suggest Punch Planet!) or an old KOF classic. Hell, good rollback implementation even makes playing on (decent) wi-fi actually acceptable.
I’ve competed on stage in a rural village in F-29 Retaliatory head2head tournament (over serial cable) around 1993. I’ve gotten to grab first place in a Bo3 single elimination format, defeating my nemesis, Lil’ Cloud, in the finals. I took home a mobo for a 286 (but no cpu, PC case, peripherals or anything else). For a bonus prize, they’ve pitted me against the final final boss, the IT admin from the neighbouring town. I’ve beaten him 4:1 in a Bo7, and my reward was an AdLib card. I did end up using this one in a 386 SX build that my dad bought me a couple months later.
Despite being on stage, I do not remember having any stage fright at all. I remember the crowd around us, but everything got drowned out by the sound blasters screeching the noise into my ears through some cheapo cans. I just remember being baffled that after having my toughest final against Lil’ Cloud, I suddenly have another challenger I have to sit down against.
Around '97 I got sucked in by Quake II in PC cafes, mostly playing FFAs on LAN. However the Q2 scene gradually moved on to QuakeWorld, Quake 3 Arena and Counter Strike. Since my PC was always lagging behind in performance, I chose to stick with QuakeWorld, and mostly played in 320x200 software rendering so I could aim for 120Hz + 120 fps vsync as time passed.
Around this time, between 98-2003 there were a couple LANs in and around Budapest that were CPL feeder events, however QuakeWorld has long been dropped from the biggest international events, and was relegated to mostly online tournaments and smaller local LANs only. Despite this, they always allowed QuakeWorld players in and even offered prices for first three places within categories. However the participants gradually declined from 50:50 Q3/QW to 50:40:10 CS/Q3/QW to 75:20:5 CS/Q3/QW by the end.
In the last LAN where they still allowed QW players in, must have been around 2003, I think we had no more than 50 players out of 600+.
I’ve competed, but not on stage, in the 1v1 category, choking due to nervousness around the quarterfinals, dropping to Loser’s Bracker. I did lose my LB match as well, the nerves never recovered. I remember one of my buddies talking over my shoulder, asking me wtf was wrong with me that I’m making all these mistakes. I came out as a sweaty mess from both matches, feeling totally defeated and unable to process why things were going the way they did. It haunts me to this day and gave me flashbacks to it in online competitive play, like WoW’s Arena 2v2/3v3.
I also competed in 2v2 at the tournament with my best bud as my partner later that day. The nerves were still pretty bad, but I was relying on my partner’s skill to carry us, along with some clever map selections. It was a Bo5, and we knew that with my nerves shot we had to focus on just one map that had mixed shaft (lightning gun)/rocket launcher (RL) play in order to take the series, as otherwise we could dominate maps that relied on RL only, as predictive spawn lockdowns was our forte, in contrast with raw skill/aim. Basically the moment we won first draw for map selection, we knew we could make it a 3:1 or 3:2 at worst if we selected our least favoured map and won it. I’ve still made a lot of mistakes in heated moments, and we did have to draw out one map by deliberately avoiding respawns near the end of the match in order to deny our opponents a win, but in the end my partner carried us to victory.
While the 2v2 finals were not exactly on stage, they did put a cam on a big screen and we also had a bit of a crowd forming around us. Smoking a light joint an hour before the match did help though. I forgot what we won. I just remember receiving a trophy at the finals ceremony and feeling completely undeserving of it. And then moving out of my parent’s basement and in with my buddy, getting high 24/7 for the next 6 months.
As for the question is it even worth it: yes, yes it is. Not when you are older though. At 20+ you are already aged out, and the commitment required is tremendous just to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Better stick to turn based strategy.
Red Candle Games said that “in the aftermath of the incident, some still possess different speculations about Devotion. As regretful as the incident was, we have to bear its full consequence.
I don’t know if this was an honest mistake, but… 😂
This entire controversy is from 2020. Spoiler: GOG did not relist the game. Red Candle sold it on their own storefront, and both Steam and GOG retained a tally in the “bends over for CCP” column.
For me, it was Skyrim. It was one of the first games I bought with my own money and certainly the first where I followed the news before the release. I did not know that Todd Howard was a notorious liar and that ruined the game for me. Like, the game itself was probably fine. It was an upgrade in some ways and a downgrade in various other ways. But having been promised that it would be so much better than Oblivion and Morrowind, when it was simply not, that just robbed me of the fun I could have had with it.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne