MudMan

MudMan, 3 dni temu

I'll take persona, although it's been way too many games with the same setup. Ditto for the Trails series.

Honestly, I don't think it got any better than ATB systems in FF 6 and 7. Everybody else is either riffing on those or spending so much money they think they can't be those and need to be Devil May Cry instead.

MudMan, 26 dni temu

Ah, the hallmark of mainstream usability: a four bar chart with multi-segmented portions based on different independent ratings of compatibility that don't agree with each other.

MudMan, miesiąc temu

Kind of overrated? I mean, it was cool to see a bit more of a palatable cinematic presentation in real time to go along with the late 90s PC jank, and that theme did kick ass, but it's less groundbreaking in context than I think people give it credit for. And it doesn't hold up nearly as well as System Shock 2, in my book.

MudMan, miesiąc temu

I'm not of the opinion that more simulation and more "realism" are always better, but I would absolutely take a System Shock 2 remake, especially after the System Shock one (1 one?) turned out great.

MudMan, miesiąc temu

The closest thing we had was the System Shock duology, since both predate Deus Ex. Deus Ex was basically accessible System Shock. Having dialogue trees and NPCs without losing the open-ended nature of System Shock's more dungeon crawl-y approach was the real selling point. Well, that and the trenchcoats and shades. The Matrix was such a big deal.

But even then, each of those elements were already present in different mixes in several late 90s games. Deus Ex by some counts was one of the early culminations of the genre blending "everything game" we were all chasing during the 90s. The other was probably GTA 3. I think both of those are fine and they are certainly important games, but I never enjoyed playing them as much as less zeitgeist-y games that were around at the same time. I did spend a lot of time getting Deus Ex to look as pretty as possible, but I certainly didn't finish it and, like a lot of people, I mostly ran around Liberty Island a bunch.

I played more Thief 2 that year, honestly. I played WAY more Hitman than Deus Ex that year. I certainly thought System Shock 2 was better. Deus Ex is a big, ambitious, important game, for sure, but I never felt it quite stuck the landing when playing it, even at the time.

MudMan, miesiąc temu

Hah. I almost wrote that I also think the two Ultima Undergrounds are better than Deus Ex despite being much older and having an objectively very clumsy interface. Then I thought that'd get us in the weeds and pull us too far back, so I took it out.

Look, yeah, Deus Ex rolled in elements from CRPGs and had good production values for the time. But all those things were nothing new for an RPG, they were just new for a shooter. Baldur's Gate and Fallout were a few years old. The entire Ultima franchise had been messing around with procedural, simulated worlds for almost a decade at that point, which in the 90s was a technological eon.

And yeah, System Shock had created a template for a shooter RPG, they just applied it to a lone survivor dungeon crawly horror thing, rather than try to marry it to the narrative elements of NPC-focused CRPGs, which is admittedly a lot more complicated. And Deus Ex was fully voiced and had... well, a semblance of cutscenes. In context it's hilariously naive compared to what Japanese devs were doing in Metal Gear or Final Fantasy, but it was a lot for western PC game standards.

But it wasn't... great to play? I don't know what to tell you. Thief and Hitman both had nailed the clockwork living stage thing, and at the time I was more than happy to give up the Matrix-at-home narrative and the DnD-style questing for that. The pitch was compelling, but it didn't necessarily make for a great playable experience against its peers.

I didn't hate it or anything. I spent quite a bit of time messing with it. That corny main theme still pops up in my head with no effort on demand. I spent more time using it as a benchmark than Unreal, which I also thought wasn't a great game.

Also, while I'm here pissing people off, can we all agree that "immersive sim" is a terrible name for a genre? What exactly is "simulated"? Why is it immersive? Immerisve as opposed to what? At the time we tended to lump them in with stealth games, so the name is just an attempt to reverse engineer a genre name by using loose words that weren't already taken, and I hate it. See also: character action game. Which action games do NOT have characters?

Man, I am a grumpy old fart today.

MudMan, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

Hm. The breakout box doesn't surprise me, I would assume the headset itself is relying on some hardware within the PS5 itself, since they were clearly developed in parallel and the original PSVR also needed a breakout box itself. I bet they could have solved it in software, but maybe there's some type of hardware security also at play. Plus I can see how they'd rather avoid all the RMA from people just plugging the headset to random USB-C ports and being frustrated when it doesn't just work. It's an old school way to handle it, but at least this way they know it'll work.

The missing features are... more interesting. At a glance it makes sense, in that no PC VR game has support for headset rumble or triggers with variable resistance, to my knowledge. Is there a PC HMD with HDR support? Or any games that use it?

So on those and the eye tracking you'd expect no games would take advantage of it out of the box... but does this mean they are disabled at the driver level and no upcoming games can support it either? Or would it be possible for them to enable that down the line for maybe their own ports or, say, Capcom ports later on.

I'm surprised we're this far, honestly. This is a desperation move at best. The PSVR 2 is a funky-ass HMD compared to what has become the standard for this space. Still wired, unusual choices for displays, super unique features... a minimum baseline to meet SteamVR standards makes some sense, it's just surprising that they aren't leaving some of their feature set out there as an option for devs later on, since that seems like it would encourage more third party PSVR content on PS5.

Still, better than having a paperweight. Even with just the basic features, the PSVR headset should look nice enough and get you most of the way to a full PC VR experience. If you have a gaming PC and only have VR through your PS5 this should significantly expand your options. Although I suppose if that's you I have serious questions about why you went that way instead of getting a Quest 2 when Meta was just giving them away, like everybody else did.

MudMan, 2 miesiące temu

Yeah, it's a nice feature that the PS5 seems to use primarily for performance. I do wonder why it's turned off here and whether there is a standardized way to report eye tracking in VR to relevant middleware they could be tapping into instead. I genuinely don't know enough about the technicalities of all the overlapping VR platforms to tell.

MudMan, miesiąc temu

I hear you, but for a budget rig something's got to give. If it's any consolation regarding Meta, they used to bleed money every time they sold one of those, so you wouldn't have done them any favors. I don't know if the balance is less crazy for them these days.

You make a good point in that holdouts that haven't purchased a PSVR2 due to lack of games may feel more justified to take the plunge now, but the extra money of the adaptor starts to sting in that case, particularly if splurging on something that may not get much use isn't acceptable for your situation.

MudMan, miesiąc temu

All of that's fair. It's gonna be very dependent on your price flexibility and your preferences between Meta and Sony's ecosystems and platforms.

I'm with you that VR is absolutely optional, too. I don't think it's a mass market proposition and hey, I personally don't use the VR devices I own frequently, so...

I'll say the one thing I think you're wrong about is how available the dirt cheap ground level "phone in a box" alternative is. I don't think that's compatible with anything anymore. The Samsung Gear VR is discontinued and unsupported in software, the Labo thing was always a gimmick and I'm not aware of a phone conversion kit that will give you any compatibility with any of the ongoing VR platforms. Entry level to be able to do anything VR (as in, at least compatibility with PC VR games) remains the Quest 2 at this point. Next would be the Quest 3 and the PSVR2 and I suppose some of the cheaper PC HMDs. After that you get into the PC high end.

MudMan, 3 miesiące temu

Nah, you have a point. There are a bunch of "2D soulslikes" that get advertised as "Metroidvanias", and I wish we had better language to split that difference, because there's a big conceptual shift between the "parry and dodge" souls style and the genuine Metroid/Castlevania style of movement and aggression. It feels very different and honestly the last time something scratched that itch it was Bloodstained.

So yeah, Hollow Kinght is a very well made game, but it's not what I'm looking for every time I fire up one of the DSvanias for yet another run.

MudMan, 3 miesiące temu

Maybe it's me being old, but I've been hearing "the problem with modern games is they put graphics over gameplay" since 1991.

MudMan, 3 miesiące temu

So... I keep seeing people say this online.

I assume they're saying it before they finished watching the whole season. Because they do explain what happened to the NCR and explicitly acknowledge New Vegas in at least two very significant ways.

MudMan, 3 miesiące temu (edited 3 miesiące temu)

I think the show is solid, but I did notice at one point that it's basically a reskin of Westworld and now I can't unsee it.

I mean, naive girl gets the nature of her world redefined for her and is poised to become a revolutionary fighter? That happens.

A ruthless, cruel cowboy who isn't a cowboy but plays one for a long time, has god mode on and looks like an actor you know was left in the sun for too long? Surprisingly specific, but yep.

Is actually based on a videogame full of NPCs? In different ways but yeah.

Beloved older actor plays a figure of corporate authority with a secret plan? Getting into stretch territory but I see it.

I still enjoyed it, though. Looks so much better than the trailers, too, and it took me a while to realize it's because the trailers really had to hide the gore so they looked really cosplay-y. Hard to look cosplay-y with so many chunks flying around.

MudMan, 3 miesiące temu (edited 3 miesiące temu)

Yeah, so... no, that's fanboy stuff. That's not how massive corporations make their decisions, not how artists make their decisions and, very specifically, not what is actually in the show.

Plus of course what you're saying is different to the online panic about NV "not being canon", which Bethesda has now explicitly denied. The NCR very much exists in the show, it's just been significantly downsized to early Fallout levels. Not because Bethesda is "diminishing the creations of everyone who isn't Bethesda", though. If I had to make an educated guess based on how reality actually operates, I'd assume it's because Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan wanted to make a show about a postapocalyptic wasteland and having a democratic government that has been running mostly fine for the past 100 years kinda gets in the way of that.

So yeah, welcome to franchising, where war never changes and neither does the status quo. It's mostly absurd that people in Fallout are still roaming around in reclaimed pre-war gear and doing the Mad Max schtick five generations into the postapocalypse, but Fallout gotta look like Fallout, so Fallout will look like Fallout until Fallout stops making money, at which point it will not look like anything anymore. Yay capitalism.

Hey, wanna know what they'll do to New Vegas? They'll probably do some variation on the plot of New Vegas. Mr. House and the Legion will probably still be around in some form despite it not making a ton of sense in continuity. Just like this season was all about leaving a vault to look for your missing dad, just like Filly just happens to have the same layout and landmarks as Megaton, just like there's a Dogmeat and just like Vault 33 now needs a water chip and will probably have to send someone outside to look for it. Because it's recognizable IP and recognizable IP has to be in the show so it can be fueled by recognizable IP.

MudMan, 3 miesiące temu

Well... you know, it's the same people exploring the same ideas through the same archetypes. I think that comes through pretty clearly. All joking about specifics aside, it's kinda hard to miss once you notice.

At some point we're gonna get to the synths parts and I'm expecting blow for blow repeated scenes at this point.

MudMan, 4 miesiące temu

I do find it weird how much of a fuss the second video makes about the pseudo-NFT marketplace in Roblox considering Steam has had every single one of those features in place for a while.

These are good videos, as usual for PMG, and they do highlight relevant issues, but I'm sometimes frustrated by these things in that they mix genuine, dealbreaking concerns with things they flag for this example but not when they surface elsewhere and with things that are legitimately either standard practice, long term gaming-wide concerns or... just fine, actually.

Which is not me defending Roblox, to be clear. Roblox is a mess and it's crazy how successful they are at keeping a low profile about some of the stuff they do compared to other successful games and platforms and relative to their size. For an American company it's insane how little they are on the spotlight for some of this stuff. But "some" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. These videos run the gamut.

MudMan, 4 miesiące temu (edited 4 miesiące temu)

Yeah, for instance I played basketball once and I was done.

I was roped into playing poker twice, but I already knew the ending, so it wasn't as good the second time.

MudMan, 4 miesiące temu

See, I like the skill, physical endurance or patience to properly speedrun a game.

But I will play a game on autopilot over and over again. Call it... I don't know, speedjogging a game? Speedstrutting? Power speedwalking?

In any case, there are many situations where I will gladly play through Streets of Rage in half an hour instead of barely making it through the tutorial of whatever the current epic is. I feel at peace with that.