I’m only a few minutes in, but one thing I’m already noticing from the gameplay: proper ammo types being looted like 9x19mm FMJ (as opposed to “Pistol Ammo” reported from a previous build). Good sign.
EDIT: The visuals are stunning and it’s promising how well they’ve captured (and built upon) the stellar atmosphere of the originals. I love hearing the designers emphasise loneliness, desolation and fear - all essential to the magic of STALKER. I do hate the immersion breaking video game compass at the top. Hopefully it can be turned off.
I remember you were upset about that change which I agree would have been immersion breaking. Glad to see they are making that change. Looking forward to watching this later
I think it looks pretty good. Intrigued about what they said about the AI, I think that’s one of STALKER’s strengths - A-life and not only the combat AI but the way the world feels alive and dynamic. If they nail that - along with the atmosphere - they’ll have a great product, even should it turn out the story is mediocre.
Fantastic game. As an achievement hunter I shake my head a bit at the gold chip on all jokers thing, but for now I just see it as another excuse to play it more. I still feel like I‘m shit at the game though around 40 hours in.
I loved the old Blizzard RTSs as a kid. I think it was SC2: Heart of the Swarm when I got a bunch of coworkers to get the game and we played together quite a bit over a month. But it reached a point where I could take them all 4v1 (we only did that once though, I didn’t want to scare them off or be a gloating asshole) and win without really breaking a sweat. I learned my build orders and my keyboard shortcuts.
I could not for the life of me break out of bronze in multiplayer.
A couple years later one of my best friends was talking shit about whooping me in SC1, and I destroyed him. But that game gave me some ideas.
I think people really enjoy the base building aspect, like all of my friends treated building bases on some level as being like Sim City.
And back in the SC1 days, battle.net was rife with “No Rush” games where you build yourself up for whatever agreed upon time limit and then go at it. Games would often be labeled as NR15 or NR20, for example.
I think one possible resolution for increasing the popularity of RTS is to take a hybrid real time approach. You can build and do things in real time, but under the hood battles and the economy operate in discrete chunks of at least several seconds. You can do something similar to Sim City where every minute or two or whatever, you get all your resources to spend, and can then spend the rest of the time focusing elsewhere.
You can make a Base Building RTS where No Rush rules are baked into the game.
There is room for RTS games to be chill and more relaxed, as opposed to the game long manic feeling that you can never do anything fast enough, and that I think is the avenue to giving RTSs some mainstream limelight.
I think one possible resolution for increasing the popularity of RTS is to take a hybrid real time approach. You can build and do things in real time, but under the hood battles and the economy operate in discrete chunks of at least several seconds.
Come to think of it, I saw two approaches that were similar to this before:
In Frozen Synapse, you plan your turn, eventually commit it, then it plays out at the same time as the enemy planned turn. You can even move enemy units while planning to simulate possible movements and attacks they might make.
In the fourth Battle Isle game, Battle Isle The Andosia War, you did your strategic turns with your units, then in real-time as everyone else did those turns, built your production base and produced units. So the longer you take for your strategic turn, the more time everyone else gets to work on their economy.
I thought Frozen Synapse's ability to let you simulate your opponent's moves was super cool - surprised I didn't end up seeing it in more strategy games (obviously not so much applicable to the normal real-time stuff though!).
@Carighan@anewdaydawns Another fundamental aspect is that RTS is PC centric genre, and therefore made with a mouse and keyboard only mindset, ignoring the consoles fan base, as such, If we want it to become more popular, then we should ask ourselves what kind of RTS can be designed with a controller in mind, and therefore work on home consoles, find a balance of being appealing to them without straying too far from the core design principles of this genre
I mean, I dunno. I was sort of okay with the link’s awakening remake using this aesthetic, because it was a one off game, but it does sort of strike me as a very like, default, low rent kind of appearance, and the item and enemy copying ability also strikes me as something that’s not that interesting, and not as interesting as the normal zelda dungeon by dungeon kind of scheme. A good portion of the things you’re gonna copy are probably going to have exceedingly similar behaviors, they’re going to be functionally identical.
It’s obviously a copy, ironically, or maybe an extension, of the design philosophy behind the recent two big zelda games, and this one’s adapted it to a lower budget 2D game. I dunno, I’m still not in love with the idea as a whole, and that’s kind of after two big games. I dunno if it’s really ever gonna be on the level of, say, portal, or something, right? Which is a weird comparison to make, but I do feel the need to make it. I’ve never really found physics puzzles to be that interesting, which is gonna be what a lot of games that try like, universal mechanics, are going to have to cowtow to, because physics systems are theoretically infinite even though they actually do have a relatively small set of constraints, right. I’ve also never really enjoyed stacking boxes on top of one another as a solution to a puzzle, despite that being omnipresent in every good immersive sim, which is weirdly what I would kind of peg the modern zelda design philosophy as belonging to.
I dunno. I feel like the change in style has been kind of hard for me to pin down. It’s very obvious in a difference of feel, right, but in terms of formally locking down the actual difference, I can’t say I’ve really found much that’s all that weird about it. Sure, you can theoretically use whatever ability, anywhere, at any time, to make any vehicle, or scale any platform, stuff like that. But 90% of the time, it’s going to be totally useless as an ability. You’re going to fall into a couple of discrete, routine behaviors, even given an “infinite” ability that you’re just sort of, free to use and abuse like that.
Compare this to a conventional zelda tool, which is not generally usable anywhere, right. You can use the hookshot to stun or damage enemies, right, you can use it to grapple onto a discrete set of platforms, but outside of that it’s not gonna be too useful. I don’t see that as being all that different from like. Ahh, well, with this ability, you can paste together two pallets! It’s effectively the same, they’re gonna come with a pretty similar set of constraints and behaviors.
I feel like, to me, a lot of the fun of emergent mechanics comes from eeking out solutions to puzzles that designers probably haven’t thought about at all. Sometimes you can basically sidestep a challenge that otherwise you would’ve had to do, and in that way, it feels very much like a casual version of a speedrunning trick, or, it’s something that rewards your cleverness, or your understanding and mastery of the mechanics beyond even what the designers might anticipate. I like that much less when it feels like the designer doesn’t have a set, like, idea of a solution to a puzzle. When they’ve just given me all the tools, and then they tell me to go nuts, I don’t feel as though I’m circumventing anything, I just feel as though I’m doing the puzzle as god intended. There’s probably also some amount of, if everyone’s super, then no one is, going on there. If every puzzle is some puzzle I’m able to circumvent with clever rules lawyering or mechanics abuse, then it gets older, faster.
So I dunno. I really like the third banjo kazooie game, it was probably ahead of it’s time, if this is the kind of direction we’re going in now, and obviously I have some level of nostalgia for it, because the 360 was my formative console, because I’m a zoomer. Feel old yet? At the same time, the first two games were probably just straight up better games, if I had to actually be honest with myself. They have wider appeal, and even if you just have an ability that you can only use on a specific pad, with a specific symbol, and 95% of the challenges can only be conquered how the game designer intends, it’s probably still gonna be better and have more broad appeal than having to either come up with a discrete set of vehicles, use the defaults, or else spend like 50% of your game time in the vehicle creation menu constructing increasingly niche vehicles to better perform the specific task.
Morrowind is the height of the series for me and one of my favorite games of all time. But the level of detail and fidelity in Daggerfall is just staggering.
Perhaps, but Nintendo also seems happy to let people forget that the Wii U ever existed. Also, they seem to not care as much about non-piracy/CFW releated hardware mods- take the 3DS capture card as an example, AFAIK it was never targeted by Nintendo since it very clearly was not meant to facilitate piracy.
I actually thought the same while watching this trailer. I hope some of it is just an issue with how it was cut rather than the game itself but as always, better wait and see how it turns out.
It looks like that’s intentional. It’s trying to capture the vibe of games from the original Half Life era and seems to be doing a fine job from what I can see.
Are you referring to the style of shooter this is trying to emulate, or just the general quality of the game itself? Cause there are tons of “boomer shooters” on Steam that are incredibly good despite the “dated” engines they often use. The game before this, Ion Fury is using the Build engine, and looks insanely good considering how much they’re pushing the engine. Not sure about this new one though.
IDK, I love my Red Dead Redemption 2 and Alan Wake 2 graphics, but gameplay comes first still for me, and “boomer shooters” are pure classic fun, especially if they have excellent level design. This looks to be in the same vein.
Edit: actually I remember the demo for this one being pretty heavily criticized for not being up to polish compared to Ion Fury and other recent “boomer shooters.” So you may be onto something. Release date might be too soon with this one. Ion was made by a different team, Phantom is made by Slipgate which has a pretty meh reputation amongst New Blood fans. Color me skeptical now as well. I thought this was being done by Voidpoint.
Ok great! I didn’t finish the first installment on PS4, so I can wait for this new release and play through the first part and second part + DLC all in one game. Sounds good to me!
The order is actually First Part > DLC > Second part, but yes! And if you fancy getting the full experience they also re-released Crisis Core FF7 (the prequel with Zack and Sephiroth) on PS5 as well well.
It makes sense, especially with the direction Remake started to go. And the original Crisis Core was getting to be very dated by now, so a refresh was welcome
Oh it does make sense storywise. I’m more salty about the fact that Remake + Intergrade are now free if you pre-order Rebirth. I spent €100 on that man T_T
I’m usually a patientgamer, but the call of ULTRA HD Sephiroth and Tifa were too strong for me.
I don’t understand why some companies just can’t figure out a consistent naming schedule for sequels. I’m looking at you Capcom and Street Fight Ultra Turbo Alpha Second Strike Tournament Edition with a Cherry On Top
How vital is it to play the Yuffie DLC? I avoided it because it came just long enough after the main game that I didn’t fancy re-learning how to play for a short DLC.
Admittedly, as may be apparent, I didn’t look too much into it.
Without spoiling anything, Intermission (Yuffie’s DLC) takes place in the middle of the Remake storyline and basically follows what she’s up to before presumably joining the party in Rebirth.
I like Yuffie as a character, so I enjoyed playing the DLC. But you could probably find a Twitch stream or no commentary Youtube playthrough to catch up on the story if you don’t want to play it and not miss out.
It’s probably not too vital. It sets up some new backstory for Yuffie (and also ties into some elements of Dirge of Cerberus of all things), but I am assuming Rebirth will sum up the important parts of Yuffie’s story so far, at least in broad strokes, for when she joins the party.
The combat in the dlc is much more refined and felt like a sign of what’s to come in rebirth. It’s very fun mechanic wise, it actually makes the main game harder to play haha
Since you seem to know what’s going on, is FF7 Rebirth a full package? Ie does it include Part 1, the DLC, and the new Part 2 all in one game, or would someone have to purchase those separately?
An honest-to-goodness single-player Arkane game, with Dishonored 2’s caliber of level design, would probably be the catalyst that finally convinced me to get an Xbox.
I was almost relieved that Redfall arrived as such a dud because I didn’t have to make this decision on that game’s behalf. Still boggles my mind Bethesda took the minds behind the greatest modern immersive sims and assigned them a live service game. What a waste.
They did this over and over again with a lot of their teams, didn't find a breakout hit like they wanted, and then looked for a buyer, which seemingly was nearly Sony and ended up being Microsoft. Chasing the live service thing is why we got Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Fallout 76, as well as Redfall. Hopefully they're done with that nonsense now.
People quite liked Prey. There was an article that came out about Redfall's development where they had something like 70% of the studio leaving because they were put to work on a live service game, but the kind of person who applies to Arkane is interested in the type of game that Arkane is known for, not what they were tasked with building. This led to them filling out the studio with inexperienced developers as they replaced more experienced talent that moved on to other companies.
Usually yes if you use only numbers, but when you use alpha/beta/release cycles etc, it’s not that uncommon to have them start from 1.0 as well.
As an example, the fifth phase of minecraft dev started with “Minecraft Alpha v1.0.0” and once it got to v1.2.6, the next was “Minecraft Beta v1.0.0”. The proper Minecraft 1.0 came after Beta 1.8.1.
That was a standard that existed because of older, ‘linear’ SDLCs. It stopped being the case when Agile development took over. When you’re using Waterfall, and all your milestones are planned out before a single line of code is written, you can do that.
Modern software development doesn’t work like that, and it’s silly to use nth-degree nested decimals (0.1.0, 0.1.1.2) when you can just use 1.1, 2.13, etc, and call something RC1.0 and 1.0 on release without bothering with internal version numbers or project codenames (or just keep the working version numbers anyways).
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