Vipsu

Vipsu, 3 godziny temu

Signed this few days a go.

Many games already do this and I would like to give honorary mention to NeocoreGames who have done this to their Van Helsing and most recently with Warhammer Inquisitor. Latter one just recently got offline support with all past seasons playable.

I dont think its unreasonable to require even live services or mmos to have robust end-of-life plan that quarantees customers that the game will remain playable in some form or another.

Vipsu, miesiąc temu

Gameplay looks fine but also very similar to most triple-A action games on the market. Combat is fluid and cinematic meaning you can probably pull off all sorts of combos by mashing light and heavy attack buttons then do bunch of acrobatic moves to dodge any enemy attacks. You can probably also counter attacks execute all sorts of cool cinematic takedowns with single button or QTE.

But this often means that the combat lacks any sort of meaningful weight, emergent gameplay is non-existent and actual player choice is very limited and thightly controlled by what the game and level designers allow.

Vipsu, miesiąc temu

They’ve probably spend a lot of budget to make the combat in this game this fluid. However as a side effect the game has become even more of an action game with leveling and loot shoveled in than before. I just hope Bioware can pull off at least some level of build diversity with different classes, skills, items and abilities so that there will be at least some depth with character progression.

Vipsu, 2 miesiące temu

The trailer makes my eyes hurt so it’s a definate skip for me.

I mean the whole thing seemed to be animated exclusively with 3s or 4s which to me looks like the characters are micro-warping around instead of moving. When watching In to the Spiderverse and LOVE, DEATH & ROBOTS (SUITS) I literally had to take breaks and watch elsewhere so rest my eyes and this looks a lot worse.

Vipsu, 2 miesiące temu

The cutscenes hurt my eyes with the frame rate but the gameplay looks alright.

Honestly not fan of the the way some 3d animations animate with 2s/3s to create fake stop motion videos. It’s even worse when they try to make it look like a cartoon/anime and completely forget to add any smear frames that make the these animations look a lot smoother than they actually are. For me these look like characters constantly warping around instead of moving which hurst my eyes, luckily it seems to only affect the characters and not the movement camera.

The gameplay looks alright but very unoriginal, there’s seems to be this basic combat with dodging, light and heavy strikes and then these fly using streams of wind/magic/energy and energy hook-shot to get you exactly where developers want you to go. Maybe the theme, story and visuals will be enough to make this shine above the competition.

Vipsu, 2 miesiące temu

Was about to comment about the developers probably had to meet some diversity quota but the “hero shooter cast” sounds even more descriptive. Personally don’t really mind much if the gameplay is good and the game is free of the usual triple-a monetization shenigans.

But in a post Baldurs gate 3 world Bioware will need to work extra hard to meet the increased expectations.

Vipsu, 2 miesiące temu

Looks like more doom which is all right in my book. Now If they can keep out the always online and live service bullshit out of this one and focus on single player it might turn out to be yet another good doom game. Not sure about the dragon and mecha though, I would rather not have any vehicles, mounts and anything like that in Doom games.

Vipsu, 2 miesiące temu

If its a single player focused with no (or very minimal) live service bullshit then great.
If not then well there’s bunch of indie or classic boomer shooters I’ve not yet tried that are just that.

Vipsu, 3 miesiące temu

Honestly all these tech layoffs could really come bite back publishers and the big tech in the near future.
Theres a lot new talent for competitors to snatch and fraction of these developers might even form up new studios to make the next big thing.

Vipsu, 3 miesiące temu

Returning to a game you’ve left unfinished or just havent played in a long while can really feel like leaving ones comfort zone. Funny thing though is that its often a lot easier than one might think once you actually gather enough motivation to sit down to it.

When it comes to light rpg mechanics, those are usually designed so that you can’t really go wrong with them. They’re more of a problem when you’re a “minmaxer” looking to “optimize fun out of the game” as then it’s really easy to start overthinking about these things.

Vipsu, 3 miesiące temu

Personally I feel that games are just one form of entertainment among many, it’s not all that uncommon for people to have points in their life where binging tv-series or reading books can feel more novel and interesting. It’s also possible that one finds a new hobby or interest that develops in to a obsession taking most of the free time with it.

Sure as an adult you’ll have more responsibilities and less free time to play but I feel that at least for millenials and zoomers gaming in some form or another will persist throught our lives. For some it may be few hours a day, for others it may be few hours a month but it’ll still feel good to pick up that new/old title and have some fun.

Vipsu, 4 miesiące temu

The game will likely be a moderate success provided they can fix the performance problems.

Most players (unfortunately) do not care about having microtransactions in a full priced video games or about things like Denuvo. This is party the reason why the triple-a game industry is in such sorry state at the moment.

Also I find it funny that you’re already worrying about sequels when the newest game has not been out for even a day.

Vipsu, 4 miesiące temu

• Full of microtransactions
• Single character slot
• Denuvo
• Performance problems (even on consoles)

Yeah thats an easy pass for now

Vipsu, 4 miesiące temu

They’re still microtransactions in a full priced game which can break the trust between player and the developers/publishers.
Worst ones are probably the portcrystals and metamorphsis ones which both solve artificial problems created by the developers.

Vipsu, 4 miesiące temu

Honestly they’ve been on a steady decline in my eyes at least. With each and every new entry they’re becoming more and more like the rest of the Triple-A studios.

Sure many of their games are still decent fun if you can ignore:

• Dark patterns
• Microtransactions in full priced games
• Battle passes
• Denuvo

Personally I just can’t as mere existence of these thigns ruins my trust towards these developers/publishers.

Vipsu, 5 miesięcy temu

I wish more players would just ignore these cosmetic microtransactions and go with the default skin or at least limit themselves to ones that can be obtained by actually achieving something in the game. Using default skin while outplaying people in competitive games could probably induce some people to make quite salty comments.

Vipsu, 5 miesięcy temu

Torchlight 1-2 are decent fun for normal playthrough but plagued by bad design decisions and downright silly difficulty spikes on harder difficulties. Mods probably fix many of these issues but in vanilla the build diversity on harder difficulties is quite bad with only handful of viable builds with skill trees full of “trap skills”.

Vipsu, 5 miesięcy temu

Here’s a few:

• Grim Dawn
• Titan Quest
• Sacred Series
• The incredible adventures of Van Helsing
• Warhammer 40k: Inquisitor - martyr
• Divine Divinity
• Torchlight series

Then there’s Last Epoch and Path of Exile

Vipsu, 5 miesięcy temu

Maybe some Sacred Gold or Kirby: Forgotten land. Away from my gaming pc so old laptop and switch will have to do.

Vipsu, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 7 miesięcy temu)

That approach works for some studios and some game projects but it’s no silver bullet. A lot of times gamers don’t know what they want until it’s handed on them on a silver platter which can make taking the correct kind of feedback really difficult. Sometimes outside influence may also stray the developers from their original vision.

That being said, developing game in complete secrecy for years and expecting it to become a success has pretty much the same chance as winning in a lottery. Getting MVP out there asap to see if the game will receive any sort of traction and feedback is generally the best approach unless it already has an audience (sequel or well known developer). It can be prototype, demo or early access as long as it’s something.

[edit] Removed some repetition

Vipsu, 8 miesięcy temu

Hopefully this wont be full of microtransactions even of the cosmetic kind. Monster hunter world was amazing but Capcom has become more and more greedy for the past few years.

It’s probably really tempting for them to convert Monster Hunter franchise in to a modern live service with bunch of premium cosmetics, battle passes and Fomo traps. Exoprimal and Street Fighter VI are already suffering from these.

Vipsu, 8 miesięcy temu

It has also secured an age 18 rating, with mention of violence and in-game purchases.

Hopefully they don’t get too greedy.

Capcom has been slowing morphing in to becoming yet another EA, Ubisoft or Activision with the monetization in their recent games (e.g Street Fighter VI, Exoprimal). Battle passes, Fomo-traps, social pressure, skinners boxes, Denuvo etc. At least most of their games are still good if you can ingore all the bullshit.

At least in this you can probably just throw all the pawns with paid costemtics to the nearest ditch for being walking advertisements.

Vipsu, 9 miesięcy temu

Fandom hosts a lot of wikis for long forgotten nich’e games and with these games there usually isn’t enough interest to move to another wiki. When it comes to these wikis theres rarely if ever a team behind updating the wiki and more often than not the content is just being updated and maintained by random invidividuals who just happen to be engaging with the content at given time. The very low barrier of entry makes this possible as you don’t really need to join a team to edit pages or even coordinate with other people.

When playing one of these games I like to record and share some my observations and findings about games mechanics etc but more often than not the only wiki I can find is fandom wiki that is either incomplete and possibly even abandoned. I cant be bothered to create my own Wiki for these games so I’ll just start editing that one instead because it’s easy, the foundation is usually already there and I don’t need to bother taking any sort of responsibility/mantle of maintainer or admin.

While Fandom may not be the most optimal choice and there may be better ways to host wiki out there its still better than some obnoxious google document or poorly formatted steam guide that no one else can edit.

Vipsu, 9 miesięcy temu

Does this mean self-hosting the wiki?
Because that increase the barrier of entry by tenfold as a lot of publishers/game studios do not host their own wikis.

Vipsu, 9 miesięcy temu

All too common within attention economy for people to go for the more popular choice.
Search engine algorithms tend to make things even worse.

But there are games out there that might not even have wikis if Fandom didn’t make the barrier of entry so low.

Vipsu, 9 miesięcy temu

Well old games like The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut or Moero Chronicles.
Neither of these where completely empty when I found them. Been updating them and filling some gaps in the wiki for the fun of it.

Many would consider both of these games “dead” by many metrics but people can still buy them, play them and have fun with them.

Vipsu, 9 miesięcy temu

The problem is that the content is already in wiki fandom and there are no contributors invested/interested enough to migrate all the information to alternative wiki. These fandom wikis have no teams just random individuals making contributions of various sizes.

If I do ever get invested enough to a game to actually create a wiki I’ll definately use something else than fandom.

Vipsu, 9 miesięcy temu

Quoting what I said in earlier reply:

Neither of these where completely empty when I found them. Been updating them and filling some gaps in the wiki for the fun of it.

I have not created any wikis myself I’ve just contributed to few that I’ve found which unfortunately have been hosted on fandom.

Vipsu, 9 miesięcy temu

I second Grim Dawn as it’s clearly labor of love from the developers and still getting updates. I also like the fact that its not live service like Path of exile meaning that it does not require online connection and can be even be modded.

It remains to be seen with GGG will do with Path of Exile 1 when they release Path of Exile 2, it would be cool if they would release something like POE Unlimited a premium version of the game that would allow people to play the first game as single player experience, mod it and host their of servers.

But in this day and age it’s much more likely that they’ll just force people to move on to their next big thing.

Vipsu, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

Maybe I am just getting old but I’ve started to spend a lot more time with older games and titles that may be rough around the edges but have some unique ideas and actually take some risks with their game mechanics.

One of these games is Outward which has a lot of walking (quick travel is almost non existent) and serviceable combat system that leaves a lot to be desired. However both of these do give the game some flavor that is missing from many modern games now combine this with interesting “death” mechanic where instead of respawning you’re thrown in to random scenarios related to the area where you died. Another mechanic is backpack which you’ll need to carry any meaningful amount of items and which will limit your movement in battle if you do not drop it with all your items. The way palyer needs to sacrifice health to receive mana is also interesting and how different each mastery tree is is also nice. I do have to admit that I’d like the game a lot more without time limits on quests as they stress really me out.

Another one is Incredible adventures of Van Helsing which is diablo-style ARPG that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It took me awhile to understand the games mechanics which lead to bad time initially but once I understood the power-up system, focus on flat elemental damage bonuses instead of percentage based ones and how silly some skills where with power-up the game got me hooked. The dialogue and story is also pretty good for ARPG and fully voice acted.

Third one is Wurm: Unlimited which is basically special version of MMORPG Wurm: Online where players can host their own servers with their own tweaks and mods. While Wurm Online is substriction based mmorpg with very very slow progression most Wurm Unlimited servers are free to play and have quadruple experience modifiers making the game a lot more enjoyable. The game is basically medival fantasy sandbox where players can terraform the world, build all sorts of structures, hunt, farm and even do pvp on pvp servers. While a lot of the game is just pressing buttons and waiting for action timers to pass there’s a lot of depth in the game and it can get suprisingly immersive. I do however recommend joining to one of the long lasting servers like Sklotopolis instead of playing the game solo on self-hosted server as the experience is a lot better with small community even if you prefer to do things solo as the world will feel a lot more interactive and a lot less empty.

Vipsu, 9 miesięcy temu

Sure but for how long and in what state?

There’s a lot of enshittification going around with games and services with more greedy business practices and it would be naive to think GGG is immune to it. When it comes to live service games certain level of skepticism is healthy to have. Now I do hope we’ll be able to play POE1 even 10 or 20 years from now with it being just as good.

Vipsu, 9 miesięcy temu

To Each Their Own I guess. Single player games tend to respect players time a lot more and thus usually require a lot less grinding or farming to complete. That being said Grim Dawn does have online multiplayer and community hosted seasons.

Vipsu, 11 miesięcy temu

When it comes to Armored Core 8/10 is actually 1-2 points higher than the series usually gets.
The game is no Dark souls or Elder ring but not bad for previously rather niche franchaise.

Vipsu, 11 miesięcy temu

If the story or it’s presentation is lacking then it’s something a lot of players may want to know before buying the game.
Now how much it should affect the actual score depends on the reviewer.