Remember when Cyberpunk fucked up their release. They knew they fucked up and owed it to the gamers. They told their board and stockholders to hold off, and that they needed to rebuild trust with their users before they could make line go up.
So they took their time, they redid many of the mechanics that people didn’t like, the fixed all of the bugs, and then they released Phantom Liberty - one of the best expansions I have ever seen in gaming history. Good enough where it could have been a game on it’s own.
That is how you rebuild trust with the community. You tell your stockholders to shut the fuck up and let you do what you do best. If they don’t trust you to do that, then fuck em, they can sell their stock, why are they holding stock in a company they don’t trust?
I might need to revisit cyberpunk, I didn’t know an expansion was ever released. I kind of hit max level doing mostly side quests within 4 months of launch and lost interest.
Oh trust me, I had a decent time playing it. I played through it 100%, did all the side stuff, did the base building - everything. But, I still felt annoyed and bored a good chunk of the time. The game was fine. But it was only fine. I wouldn’t say it was revolutionary or anything Bethesda said, it was just… fine.
I would definitely need a new character, nothing worse than picking up an old save and having zero clue about what’s going on in game. I think I’ll put that on my list, I really did enjoy the game at the time I played it, and I definitely got 100 hours playtime from it.
basically the major points of change was launch, then cyberpunk edgerunners clothing dlc patch (1.0 but bigs fixed). 2.0 rewrote some of the games mechanics that dropped before the expansion. and then the expansion was released (which added new endings)
Post-2.0 Cyberpunk is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time. You can tell it’s a product of effort, and love for the project. They have taken in a considerable amount of feedback from pre-1.5.
Meanwhile, Starfield is a complete miss in just about every way imaginable, and the expansion has followed through the same footsteps. On top of that, the studio actively gaslit people who expressed disapproval, even when it was constructive criticism.
I fully expect them to say it’s getting “review bombed” now, which is the current industry redefining of a term to make it come off as “It’s not us, it’s the stupid gamer’s fault”
It’s not a review bomb if it’s fully deserved. If you make a bad product, you deserve a bad review, and maybe Bethesda should have thought about that ahead of time
Bad cars don’t have good maneuverability is you full press the speeding stick, I imagine that that stick is an acceleration pedal and only full press it when I don’t need to do sharp turns. I would say that cars feel maybe too real.
You playing with a controller? I always thought the driving was optimized for the controller as I can’t half press acceleration on a keyboard.
It’s a little bit better after the updates, but it’s still suboptimal I think.
Yeah, as most 1st person view games it’s just less taxing in my hands. I agree that not being to half accelerate would feel bad, you would start drifting all the time and that would suck for control. Try using W as an acceleration button, not a “forward” button. If you see that you need to take a turn stop accelerating for a while and then S before you start turning, like with a car.
I think they have changed the driving a bit in one of the earlier updates.
Saw it in one of the patch notes but havn’t played myself so I couldn’t tell you what’s different about it…
Cyberpunk was buggy, unoptimized, and kind of unfinished, but the fundamental game design was sound.
Starfield on the other hand is broken at its core. The Bethesda RPG experience just does not translate to the open worlds space map they built the game on. So they can’t take the cyberpunk approach because they’d have to build an entirely different game from scratch.
I don’t know why anyone decided that that engine was the right way to go. The number one thing that killed the game for me was the endless loading screens. Constantly. Whenever I started feeling immersed, a new loading screen would pop up and it ruined it for me. We have engines left and right that don’t need to do this anymore, but starfield, the game that’s trying to base itself to be a realistic exploration game, decided that endless loading screens were still the best way to go
even without the loading screens it would still be terrible. get a quest, go to your ship, take off, travel to other system, land, exit your ship, walk to destination, reverse all that to turn the quest in, rinse and repeat. it’s just a tedious experience.
the best part of Bethesda games is just being able to wander around aimlessly in a pretty environment, likely stumbling upon little easter eggs or side quests along the way. none of that exists in Starfield.
Reading it like that, the loop sounds straight off Diablo 1 on PSX. Get quests, head to the dungeon, loading screen, wipe the floor, loading screen, wipe next floor, back to town, loading screen, turn in.
That kind of loop is not bad in itself, but Bethesda applied it to the wrong type of game.
That was one of the things that really helped with the immersion for me in Witcher 3 and even Cyberpunk. You walk into a building, house, etc and the world outside just continued and was present. I’m still quite impressed with their engine and it is a bit sad that they’ll be switching to UE5 for the next Witcher.
I know! Red engine honestly is pretty great once they got the bugs worked out, I’m sad they’re leaving it. It was extremely immersive, and there’s definitely something about it that feels different.
Same with No Man’s Sky. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but they buckled down and delivered on almost every promise that they failed on back at release. Not only that but every update since the game came out has been for free. Both No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk are fantastic games, and they were garbage on release. Bethesda has been doing the opposite approach and avoiding feedback from fans since Skyrim came out the first time.
At launch, for me at least, it was a cool lonely scramble to survive.
Now it’s a multiplayer game with a bunch of super easy shortcuts all over the place, even outside of the multiplayer. I enjoy playing with my friends, but the solo experience is definitely worse now.
I never figured a reason to even bother with multiplayer in NMS, except maybe to speed up base building. The only real challenge of the game is surviving the first hour, even on hardcore/permadeath.
Yeah, I have the permadeath achievement. Once you get off the first planet you’re fine.
It used to be harder for a lot longer. Now you can just teleport anywhere you want at anytime.
You answered a question with a good answer, just not to the question they aske. They asked about the comment - “it’s not the game we bought into at launch”. They were talking about how a lot of people complained that what the game was at launch wasn’t what had been advertised - what people “bought into”.
You seem to be explaining why it’s “not the game you bought at launch” - which is definitely a valid argument too, just to something else.
Oh god, so there is absolutely nothing they can ever do to make up for it, I guess. Even after like 10+ MAJOR updates and expansions over 6+ years for free, they can’t possibly ever do enough for some people, I guess.
I mean, it all hinged in the fact that under all those glitches and bugged mechanics CDPR still had a nice game. Starfield can’t be salvaged cuz the core game is just mediocre shit.
I wanna say it’s a failed IP at this point, but who knows how many copies sold. What is sure is it doesn’t deserve any more of my time. I have the DLC but won’t reinstall that garbage
It certainly sold a lot. Bethesda once claimed to have over 10 million players across all platforms. Even if we assume half of those were using gamepass, that’s still 5 million sales.
Of course, if you compare it to Fallout 4’s first 6 months, with reported 12 million sales on day-one, that’s a significant letdown.
Starfield is a very real “could have been”, if only [huge list of changes] happened.
I didn’t play it at the time because of the bugs, but from what I saw the good parts of Cyberpunk were already present. Stuff like storytelling, interesting characters etc.
Starfield has none of that.
I’m still mad the monowire doesn’t work how it was said it would and that the cops can’t be bribed and shit like that. It’s a great game now and a lot of fun to play but I won’t ever trust another game company again like I did with them after they made witcher 3.
The difference is, there is no fixing Starfield, it is rotten to the core. You would have to re-do most of the story elements and writing, and the disjointed, empty world. On top of that you’d have to fix the bugs and technical limitations like the constant loading screens. At this point you would be throwing out most of the game and basically starting from scratch with a few systems done, like the ship building and possibly gunplay.
I think cyberpunk never became what many wanted, but if you let go of your expectations, it is a good game.
Funny thing is that shipbuilding also felt annoying to me. There were so many arbitrary restrictions that I felt like I couldn’t actually make the ship I wanted, it always felt the same
That’s exactly how I felt too. I tried SO MANY times to build the ship I wanted. Never could get it done. I even console-command-cheated vendor stock to allow myself access to every part at my home base, and even STILL THEN I could never get it the way I wanted it. It was important to me for role-playing purposes for every crew member on board to have their own bed, and a good kitchen, living space, bathrooms, etc… Stuff that just makes sense for a spaceship that is essentially a flying house. But so many times I could never get the damn ship builder to do what I wanted. I’d change some random part, and then BAM some of my beds would disappear for no reason? Ok well now two of my crew members have nowhere to sleep. wtf.
Just wound up abandoning my entire build and going back to the same ol ship I’d been using the whole game.
spoilerIt’s also absolutely bizarre to me that the end-game ship, the one I had been looking forward to for SO LONG is just completely and totally 100% empty. When I had my crew members on board, they just stood still in place and stared at the wall. What the hell is going on here!??!?!?! That really ruined the entire ship for me. Could never get over that.
I dislike the narrative that something is “unfixable”, everything is fixable if there is a will to do so.
I don’t know why game developers seem to have inhibitions of changing the game too much after release. For instance reworking and extending the main story in a game seems to be a big red line for them.
For instance I would have wished in Cyberpunk 2077 to actually play Vs introduction into Night City and the individual fixers myself, instead of just watching a cut scene. A DLC could have extended the start of the game a bit.
The same for Starfield, they could extend and improve the main story, characters and locations in an update, but seem hesitant to do so. Something like directors cut, that adds cut content as well as tons of side quests into the game.
If people still want to play the original game, they can make the extended story optional, like sleecting what version you want to play at the game start.
For bugs, they could work together with the community and the “unofficial patch” and engine fixer modders, instead just ignoring them. In Skyrim SSE for instance they still had many of the same bugs that Oldrim had and where fixed by thr community.
Bethesda could improve, and even fix their games, if they would decide to do so. Their DLC just doesn’t seem to be worth what they ask for, it could have been just part of a free update, so that some more people buy the base game.
I have a strong suspicion that truly talented writers who are able to build memorable stories in great worlds are few and far between, and those that are willing to work in the games industry of today are as rare as hen’s teeth. Most companies, including Bethesda, simply don’t have the talent at hand to fix their mess, or there wouldn’t be a mess in the first place. The truth is probably somewhere between this, and the ol’ “eh, good enough”.
I just ment you’d have to cut so much that at that point it would basically be a new game. I’m thinking a bit more from the dev point of view. Like an old rusted-to-hell car, everything is fixable. The question is cost: if you have to replace or re-fabricate every piece than you’re better off starting from scratch.
I’m the case of Starfield, changing the core story, characters, missions, and theme is basically the same as replacing the entire car body.
On that note, how is Cyberpunk still 60 euros on Steam? I know it’s been getting better with the DLC and everything, but the game’s been out for ages.
That said, I might have to buy Phantom Liberty. I bought and finished the base game like 2 or 3 years ago I think and I really enjoyed it even back then.
Personally I think it’s worth it, it’s one of the few games I happily would pay full price for again. They did a full redemption arc, their game is now up there as one of my favorites of all time, next to Witcher 3 and RDR2. I think they deserve my money. What I really think is that Cyberpunk deserves 60. How the fuck can Assassin’s Creed think that they’re on the same level (or higher) than that?
I just finished playing it for the first time and I was blown away right from the start! Guess I’m glad I waited for the polish, but the world design, voice acting and overall storyline was absolutely fantastic. I couldn’t help feel bad for all the artists that clearly put a lot of love in to the world only to be overshadowed by bugs and poor implementation.
Ah yes it’s always a bug after massive community backlash. If there wasn’t much, it’d have been a test, and if there wasn’t any, it was always intended.
yes sure it could’ve been a bug, but can we really believe them that it was?
companies are on a quest to pollute our lives with ads, it’s not a stretch to think it’s bullshit when another attempt to do that is being denied with “whoopsie the new guy wrote the code wrong nothing to worry about here!”
I watched that video when it came out and it sent me down a rabbit hole of speed running and gaming retrospectives that was so deep I now can’t even sleep without my gaming videos. I don’t even play games and haven’t in many years but I’m so deep in the shit now even my daughter questions my watching habits wondering why I watch this stuff but don’t actually play.
Ah the ole summoning salt a roo. I feel like we’ve all been down a similar rabbit hole. I went down one with one of his many Mike Tysons punch out videos lol
No he glitched it on purpose. classic tetris game doesn’t stop. it goes forever until you lose.
however after certain level there is specific glitch that stops the game and it’s up to you can choose to not do it and play forever, or get multiple chances to delay it few more levels then do it to glitch and crash the game. That’s as close as you can get to “beating” the game
Edit: Y'know what I'll properly expand on this. The Steam Controller failed because it tried to replace vital functionality people expect from a controller. The Steam Deck learned from this mistake and just supplemented that functionality.
TBH, the way I see it, the Steam Controller was designed for games I don't want to play on controller, while being bad for games I do want to play on controller.
They’ve made it too niche, basically just fps and rts pad. I loved mine for Rocket league but was really missing the right stick. And the shoulder buttons were super stiff. And you also absolutely had to set up controls because it was so different and the pads were atrocious replacements for dpad or sticks
For me it mostly excels in games that were designed exclusively for mouse and keyboard. Ime it’s pretty bad for fps games though, maybe if you used the gyro, but I haven’t tried that much personally. I love it for Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, and lots of little indie games that don’t have gamepad support ootb.
That last paragraph is on point. That’s why I have two controllers at my desk, one regular and one Steam Controller! I love playing casual Civilization or XCOM on it and it’s surprisingly great with some FromSoftware games, especially Sekiro (for no reason in particular, it just felt good and the touchpad worked without any issues).
Honestly, IMO the lack of D-pad was less of an issue than the lack of a second analog stick. The lack of a second stick made the controller almost impossible to use in any game that was designed with 2 sticks in mind. For example Nier Automata 9S hacking minigame was a horrible experience with the Steam controller.
One tip that could make twin stick experience better on the touchpads is to bring down the range where the joystick does max output. That makes it much more responsive over default where twin joysticks do not need small granular movement. Ramblecan has video covering it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXC2f_dD0g0
The left touch zone is pressable, and four zones are four separate buttons. It’s a bit less convenient to use than a regular d-pad, it’s bigger and you need to reach slightly further, but other than that it works.
It’s actually the other way around, it’s a big d-pad with touchpad capabilities plastered over it. It’s the same physical mechanism as a d-pad, 4-way button, it’s just big.
D-pad for me, functionally, is a 4 directional buttons clustered together, oriented along the X-Y axis. To conserve parts, it’s quite often made not as 4 buttons but as a combined shifter, because you realistically wouldn’t be pressing the opposite buttons at the same time.
The left track area on the steam controller is that. The buttons are fuzed together (which is normal for D-pad) and big and harder to tell apart (which is less normal)
If the Steam Controller was designed the way lot of people wanted it than it wouldn’t have been a Steam Controller and just another Xbox or Playstation controller and added nothing new. Would have been more successful but in the end another generic twin joystick controller. So even if it didn’t succeed it brought new things to the table like touch activated gyro and touch pads that could be considered for other controllers in the future.
Agreed on it being a bad replacement for controller games. I got one around the time one of the FROMSOFT games came out (I think it was Sekiro?) and I tried using for that and it was just not usable for something like that. I haven’t really tried it for anything else since then because I don’t really play games away from my PC, so I don’t have a need for a worse but acceptable way to play M+KB games.
It didn’t fail because of a lack of a dpad but because of lack of two joysticks, but I’m glad the controller exists because I came to absolutely love the dual touchpads. And I wouldn’t trade the left touchpad a dpad, since I like using it for movement.
I wouldn’t trade the right touchpad for a joystick either, since I like using it to do quick 180s, quick swap between 5-10 inputs to bypass reloading in games like Doom Eternal by setting a dpad modeshift on a click, and touch activate gyro all on one touchpad.
Will probably be the last controller of its kind but I’m glad at least one did get made, since otherwise I’d still just be using a xbox or playstation controller like I did before getting Steam Controller.
It could but I prefer it over joystick because large touchpad makes it so its easier to not accidentally activate sprint on the outer edge.
But, the biggest part is being able to use the touchpad clicks for added move sets like dash, slide, crouch. Which lot of people wouldn’t even enjoy doing with joystick click.
Exactly, I’d rather lose a D-Pad than a joystick, and the Steam Controller lost both. That’s why my Steam Controller sits on my desk largely unused, while my PS4 controller gets all the love (I prefer XBox controllers, but PS4 has better Linux support).
I’d love to see the Steam Deck controller be made standalone, it’s super comfy and preserves both joysticks and the d-pad while having useful trackpads.
Sad thing is for me I don’t find the touchpads on the Deck useful, since unlike most users of the Deck I want to use them for movement and camera and quick input switching. And I haven’t found the Deck touchpads good for primary use in place of joysticks, so I end up ignoring the touchpads on the Deck for the joysticks despite using my Steam Controller for most games on the desktop.
I’m a controller player so it might be why I warmed up to it when it first came out, since I went from using Xbox controller on the PC to being blown away by touchpads moving as fast as a mouse without joystick speed limitation while being able to aim precisely with gyro without having to use aim assist.
So maybe an outlier as a PC gamer who preferred gamepads to mouse and keyboard, but wanted to find an improved method of using controller without reliance on aim assist.
I also prefer controllers (grew up playing Halo on controller), and gyro aim is sweet, but touchpads never felt good to me. I like physical buttons for d-pad style input (even a joystick is fine), and the right touchpad felt too much like a mouse to the point where I’d rather just use a mouse.
The Steam Deck strikes the right balance for me. The touchpads work when the mouse really is preferable, and they stay out of the way when I use the joysticks.
I like touchpads because I like being able to turn the camera as fast as I can swipe like a mouse while retaining X and Y axis control unlike stuff like the flick stick approach. And I like that I can also click up, down, left, right, center and also hold the left grip to set up chords for an additional 5 inputs for a total of 10 I can quickly change to without having to reach down to the facebuttons.
And that’s where the Deck fell short for me because I didn’t find it good for that type of functionality I want to use the trackpads for compared to users who primarily use the sticks.
Yea the only target audience for the Steam Controller seems to be people who want to play kbm games with a controller if they’re playing on a TV or something. But I reckon most PC gamers who get a controller use it to play on their usual PC setup for games that play better on a controller, they’ll just use kbm for their kbm games.
I agree that not including the D-Pad was a bad move, but if you play games that use the d-pad just for functions like map or switching of equipment, there was the option to use the trackpad like a weapon wheel where you could define i think 8 functions with OSD, and using one of the back buttons made that 16 functions you could define freely - you could replace the hotkeys of a game that used half the keyboard with this thing lol
i know that it’s configured as a D-pad by default, but it’s missing haptic feedback - there’s not enough of an indicator where on the touchpad your finger rests, and if you lose the central position, have fun finding it again without looking. i often tried it. but it’s simply inadequate as a D-pad.
It actually has d-pad, it’s just combined with one of the touch areas, you can press it like a button, and 4 zones behave like a d-pad. Granted, it’s a bit inconvenient so if you need it often, it’s not the best. But it’s there.
For everyone saying OP should let their kid play Roblox and just ban spending money… just no.
Roblox exploits child labor for profit and they have terrible scummy business practices. If you have even marginal ethical qualms about child labor and/or capitalistic exploitation of vulnerable people, you should be keeping yourself and your family away from Roblox. In your mind they should be in the same category as multilevel marketing, crypto scams and door-to-door religion peddlers.
I actually think it’s fair to call them child predators. They’re exploiting kids for money instead of sexual gratification, but it’s the same power dynamic. Child exploitation is their business model.
My son just turned 6 and I was thinking of looking at the game (my sone really likes actual Lego, and his buddies are into Minecraft and Roblox), but another parent at a bday party a few weeks back asked if we played, and then warned my that I needed to keep a close eye on it, because the suggested games algo was pushing really sketch things to his daughter.
So I started looking and decided the shopping aspect was something I didn’t want to expose him to yet. But these revelations are making me glad we haven’t yet used it and never will.
Roblox sells the idea that you can actually make money with it, it has its own economy with job hunting and salaries. Mario Maker is just a community game.
Nearly everyone knows a bunch of skills “for nothing” or, worse, for fun! Gasp! Shocking, isn’t it?
Also, did you know that modding is a thing at least since the 90s? You know, people that made modifications to games without expecting any financial return or job opportunities? People must be crazy if they’re putting so much effort just to have fun and share it, amirite?
I couldn’t stop myself from being sarcastic there, sorry. The utter cynicism struck me so hard I didn’t know where to begin explaining how wrongheaded I think people are being about that. I would for sure prefer Roblox not encourage mtx so much but sheesh man. I don’t think Timmy is trying to make the next Genshin Impact.
Intent makes a big difference. The value of Roblox as a platform and as a business is based on the work done by children to develop for it, and it was set up that way on purpose. They created an incentive model to encourage it.
Nintendo’s value as a company is not based on kids creating Mario Maker levels, nor does Nintendo push kids to do so with the promise of earning money.
Considering the newest Mario game got a shitload of ideas from Mario maker levels, anyone who was good at mario making enough to be creative with the formula had their labor stolen as RnD for Wonder
Nobody dangles a carrot of earning money in front of potential FOSS developers. Nobody goes into FOSS thinking they’re going to get a big payout.
FOSS is not pay-to-play. There’s no equivalent to Robux for FOSS developers.
FOSS developers are consenting adults who volunteer their time for freely distributed software projects, not kids creating content for a video game company that charges them for access and then makes a profit from their work.
Reist reviewed the controversial Netflix film Cuties (2020) for both her ABC Religion & Ethics column[20] and for the Christian newspaper Eternity.[21] She described the film as “a social critique on what happens when we allow misogynistic, violent, exhibitionist internet culture to ravage girls – training them to wield their immature bodies as currency.”[21] Reist related the film to the activism of Collective Shout: “In the past 10 years at Collective Shout, we have met many girls this age, who have felt the same pressures. Some have taken inappropriate pics and shared them, sexualising themselves either out of a sense of obligation, or because they have believed the lie that self-objectification is empowering or liberating.”[21] However, regarding certain scenes in the film, she wrote that “the complexity here is that in trying to make a serious ethical point about girls and sexuality, the girls may have been used unwittingly — but still inappropriately — to a noble end. The scene could have been filmed differently[.]”[20]
Yeah. As a society we seriously need to get on the same page about morality, but for my money it can’t come from a religious group tinkering with the beating heart of commerce. They may have points to make but it’s fruit of the poisoned tree.
Stuff like this is the strongest argument for a decentralized payment option. Hopefully some day crypto will not be so much a tool of monetary speculation and we can use it for that without having to have the same experience as the guy who bought a pizza with Bitcoin.
That’s what I always wanted “DeFi” to be, a systematic replacement for the legions of evil old banks who have happily collaborated with the worst institutions of the last several centuries.
You can thank Advance Australia for that. Huge think tank that likely bank rolls all this nonsense and more.
Also, down with Collective Shout! As someone who suffered child abuse, I condemn these cookers crusading under the guise of child protection. FFS, they were patting themselves on the back for stopping sales of plastic heads on Temu.
If it’s any consolation, I’m sure the American versions (Focus on the family, alliance defending freedom) are right there with them.
Props to them for figuring out a real way of imposing colonialism on impoverished countries and former colonies alike. Now their ideas and laws are spreading worldwide, like someone with diseases shitting into the local water supply. Ugh.
I have a terrible feeling that the people they duped won’t figure this out for 30 years or more, with some trappings lasting for 50+ years.
I’m personally a big fan of doing the very tiny semi-transparent (X) that’s impossible to click on as far away from the “Yes, Please Digitally Fuck My Wallet Pussy” blinking blue bar at bottom center of the screen.
Keepass2Android shows a pop-up each October asking for donations. Perfectly fine, but the dismiss button is labeled “I don’t like the app that much”. Even free software isn’t spared that sort of thing.
(The pop-up also breaks the fingerprint reader prompt for extra annoyance)
This plus constantly running out of ammo because apparently the inside of every enemy skull is just hammerspace for more ammunition than the US military budget could ever afford. God forbid a stray shot hits your porcelain character, Thanos snapping you to dust at so much as a stubbed toe.
I remember playing Max Payne. There was some battle in a bar against a guy with a shotgun. If you timed it right between reloads you could run up to the guy, stand on the bar so your guns were exactly level with his face and empty two Uzi clips point blank into his face before he could reload.
Then you would run out of ammo and he would one shot kill you.
Fallout 4 is the worst with this. I never found nished the game because of that. Multiple nukes square in the face of a supermutant and he's just at half health? I ain't got time for that.
Meanwhile i finished FO4 on hardest difficulty with just the Deliverer. 2 or 3 shots to the dome in VATS gets shit done. But i agree the difficulty is weird in that game. God Of War is pretty bad for this too.
I remember the hype around the division, it looked so cool and tactical. Then the game came out and every enemy was a bullet sponge. Instantly killed any interest I had in it.
Minus the pre release hype, this was how I felt about shadow warrior 2. The first one was so good with the retro updated FPS feel, and even made your starting sword relevant throughout the game. Then 2 came out and it was a bullet spongey, bad craft system crapfest. I didn’t even make it a couple hours after the dozens I spent in the first.
The old RainbowSix games (pre-Vegas) were absolutely brutal in difficulty. Enemies died in one or two shots, depending on what part you hit. Even a non-mortal wound would cripple them permanently. But the same rules applied to you.
the only real R6 games. when everyone was raving about Vegas i was excited to play it and… the intro mission was just a shooter level… i thought ok this is the intro to basic combat… then there was the next mission and no planning section there either. i was puzzled. i closed the game and went on some forum i don’t remember and asked whether i did something that made the game skip the one thing that set the series apart… nope. it doesn’t exist!
from the people who made a heroes game without the town screen, introducing a rainbow six game without planning! i cannot believe reviews i saw weren’t screaming that about the game.
fuck Ubisoft so much. who needs AI in games when we have Ubisoft the ultimate slop machine.
I never really cared for the planning myself but Vegas ruined it for my by introducing that stupid cover system to make it like Gears of War which was popular at the time. They completely removed the ability to lean. You couldn’t properly peek around a corner to take a shot without almost fully exposing yourself anymore. This meant you couldn’t avoid absorbing bullets all the time. This made the game unplayable so to counterbalance that, they’ve added regenerating health. But then it became too easy so they kept putting you in tactically completely unfair positions against hordes of extremely aggressive enemies that can see you and shoot you through walls. They also had a lot of visually busy environments where the enemies are difficult to spot even when they’re shooting at you because the sound mixing was so botched up that often you couldn’t even tell when you were being shot at.
They turned it into a mindless arcade shooter where you constantly absorb bullets like it’s normal and fight a whole army on your own. I wouldn’t be surprised if all of this is because some Corporate dipshit forced the inclusion of that cover system because Gears of War made money.
it’s mind boggling that it was so well received. 8s and 9s flying for the most forgettable hodgepodge.
it’s ok if you don’t like the planning but that was what made R6 what it was. you could just go in guns blazing and try to improvise but that wasn’t what the game was about. meticulously planning an infiltration, executing it in real time, communicating and coordinating with bots, and seeing all of it work out at the end was a uniquely satisfying experience that no other game provided, and made you feel like a tactical genius.
the tactical depth of Vegas was boiled down entirely to “go here” commands. tactical shooter gameplay was better implemented by games like mass effect 1 which wasn’t even primarily a shooter, let alone a tactical shooter.
I love this game because it feels like the game is actually playing by rules
Yeah you can cripple someone by shooting their legs, reduce accuracy by shooting arms, or go for a good ol headshot. You can really feel like a tactical badass. Oh by the way same goes for you
It just makes me really happy seeing that
Ofc in practice I am horrible so that sometimes undoes all my excitement
A) Increase damage falloff. For precision guns that means non precision shots do less. For short range weapons that means the penalty for working outside the effective range is higher.
B) Add more enemies. Especially if there’s any stealth element, you close windows and change how you approach encounters.
C) Depending on the game, increase the range enemies respond at. If that’s sound based, they have better hearing. If it’s enemies calling for help when alerted, they get assistance/raise alert levels from longer range.
Perfect play should be comparable. Mistakes should be punished harder.
I also agree with all that. That takes more work though.
Bullet sponges are usually companies who can’t be bothered, so I focused on the low cost options. But IMO you should be building for high difficulty, then simplifying by inverting the things I suggested and your removing moves/exposing themselves more, actually slowing movement speed and animations, etc, to make encounters more forgiving at lower levels.
I think even after cutting down, easier difficulties can tell the game is better crafted that way.
I’ll not cotton any slander against Doom of any stripe, be it I, II, Final, TNT, Plutonia, or 2016. (Note that we don’t talk about Doom 3 round these parts.)
Yes there was a doom 3 in the early 00s. It was atleast a good game great graphics fun gameplay etc. But it was more like a horror shooter instead of an action shooter like the other dooms
Metro also comes to mind. The highest difficulty level made both you and the enemies squishier, while also making ammo (which doubled as currency) much rarer. It played so much better that the community even recommended that difficulty level to complete newcomers.
… And then they made the Ranger difficulty a paid DLC in the sequel…
Everything about Cyberpunk was a big disappointment. The entire game is a glorified tech demo to show off your $1800 GPU. Which is ironic because it somehow manages to still have mediocre graphics, despite using all the latest path tracing tech to its fullest. RDR 2 looks more realistic than Cyberpunk, and it doesn’t use RT at all!
Borderlands 3 (don’t know about the others) had a brutal postgame of this. Even though new difficulty stuff was added, the real challenge seemed to be collecting enough ammo to actually finish fights. At some point, the sponginess was too much for me to care about continuing.
I still have my boxed copy of the Orange Box on a shelf. It still sees use because every once in a while I get embroiled in a Kids These Days type of conversation and I need a prop to wave around.
I’d happily put an orange Gabecube right next to it.
In a time when a lot of children’s media was focused on “eco warriors” and fighting against pollution and stuff, you had a game with an Italian plumber stomping on turtles.
The synopsis in the manual also states that Bowser turned the residents of the Mushroom Kingdom into “stones, bricks, and field horse-hair plants.” In a given playthrough, most players probably smash a lot of bricks. Bricks which used to be Mushroom Kingdom people, who are now dead. Because Mario killed them.
It’s a big maybe on Mario being the hero because he may or may not actually succeed in reaching Bowser and rescuing the princess depending on how much the player happens to suck, and/or of Luigi winds up being the victor instead.
It’s just making a joke about the game being challenging (he’s only the hero if you win). Game media used to be a lot more playfully antagonistic back when many games weren’t necessarily designed to be won.
(And while I’m here, that manual has other odd stuff in it that predates Nintendo setting global standards. It has multiple uses of the word “kill”, and it has an “ask your parents” bit about the domino effect).
One example: the early-80s arcade game Elevator Action, in which you play a secret agent who abseils to the top floor of an enemy building and has to grab secret files and make his way down to a getaway car on the ground floor. Well, that’s how it’s described. In reality, you’re a spree shooter rampaging through an office.
I believe The Last of Us II actually portrayed this one thing oerfectly. At the beginning you can feel some of Ellie’s hesitation as she comes upon death, but the more the story unfolds and the more she becomes psychopathic. It’s hinted and it’s shown. The last Act of the game is her giving in to her PTSD. I think that, for once, this is absolutely brilliant.
or as I see in the case of GW2, the game has always been “woke”, but a handful of players manage to not run into any of the LGBT NPCs for hundreds of hours, then freak out when they do 😅
I will say I kind of get annoyed at this. Not really on principle because I am all for inclusivity but on some games it’s legitimately hard to tell which one I’m picking and I don’t personally want my character to be trans (male voice, female body) in most games. In Avowed the character selection screen has your character in clothing that kind of obscures the body shape and I was like “are there boobs on this one? I can’t actually tell.” I’m apparently bad enough at this where I usually have to use the clothing off button if there is one to conclusively tell the difference. Helldivers 2’s “Brawny” and “Lean” are pretty good but those characters are in heavy armor and either one could plausibly be either biological sex. Baldurs Gate 3 uses the terms “masc” and “femme” which is less confusing but that game also lets you do any combo of muscles, voice, titties, and genetalia you want, which kind of eliminates the whole confusion in the first place since it’s all customizable. I totally get not wanting to label things but I am dumb and just want to know what I’m picking.
My annoyance with the Oblivion remaster is more that, from what I’ve read, this “body type A/B” change does not make a material difference inside the game, as NPCs still refer to your character as male/female. As a trans person my opinion is, either meaningfully rework how gender is handled in the game or just leave it alone, players know what to expect when playing an older game. This UI-level change actually just muddles player expectations.
Oh yeah, you have a good point. For example, unlike games like bg3 and cyberpunk (to some extent), some games use “body type” but your character is still recognized as either male or female depending on which you choose, so there’s no point in NOT using “male or female”.
My issue is that bodies are much more diverse than “male/female”. The most common form of sex confirmation surgery (IIRC) is cis men having breast tissue removed. (Assuming clothing isn’t baggy and hiding them) if you can’t tell the difference then there isn’t a big enough difference for you to care, and both of them cover some of both birth gender’s typical body forms.
Basically, male/female isn’t accurate and can be an issue with some players. A/B isn’t helpful but at least isn’t problematic.
If you can’t tell does it really matter if you accidentally use voice 1 with body type 2? (I don’t really see why it would but I realize that my experience is likely quite different)
As an enby I personally do prefer the body type being labelled by a number or letter rather than a gender when I try to make a character I can identify with. My favourite is to have a body with sliders for body shape options but that isn’t viable for a lot of games and does make it difficult to make good looking characters.
Also in Baldur’s Gate 3 the body types are labeled 1 and 2 (+3 and 4 for those with strong/not strong variants) It’s only the disguise menu (and I believe the game files) that call it masc/femme.
Well like I don’t want to get surprised if in the game I take my armor or clothes off and there are boobs there, especially in games where there’s not an option to change later
Like pretty much any game made before like 2020? It is only pretty recently that any games added the option to change that, and some games still don’t have the option.
What do they mean by that? Is it a complaint about limited character customization or is it something as stupid as the character model with breasts doesn’t forcibly make you a woman and vice versa? Edit: Based on other comments I’ll assume that it’s the second one.
You always have the hardcore players who make some obscure point the heart of every discussion. “This game is trash! They nerfed magic flummox attacks from +6 to +5! Who is the idiot who makes these decisions!? This is going to kill the game.”
I’ll admit to being someone who dislikes most Larian games (DoS, BG3). I’ve written reviews from the perspective of a casual gamer who finds overly complicated or mechanically overwhelming games to simply be too much. You say those things here and you get destroying by the hivemind, but it’s fair for someone to say “I didn’t like this game for the following reasons.” Not all players are looking for the same thing.
I like to leave compliments about the games as well, because there are some great storytellers or unique things about games that should be celebrated even if you didn’t like the final product.
hah I ran into this with a tactical RPG. I even got a comment along the lines that I should change my review “because the game is great, I just can’t appreciate it”. I admit this was the first (and probably last) tactical RPG I’ve tried, but still my experiences were valid impressions as a newcomer of the genre 🤷
Those are the reviews that are good! Acknowledge what you are/like, and then say why it did/didn’t meet what you prefer. I prefer negative reviews because they’re usually more specific and I can pick out what I will enjoy or be turned off by in a game.
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