Voroxpete

Voroxpete, 6 dni temu

I bailed on Dishonoured for one very specific reason; the morality system.

Dishonoured is, in my opinion a spectacular example of game design, and an equally spectacular example of how to break your game design by not understanding the way players interact with the tools you give them.

Dishonoured is a stealth game. It’s also a game with a superb combat system, and a really fun and exciting set of powers for the player to enjoy using. These things can, sort of co-exist, if somewhat uneasily. But then you add the morality system.

The morality system, in effect, punishes you for playing the game in a non-stealthy way. Or, more specifically, for playing with the wrong kind of stealth. The morality system wants you to ghost the whole game, slipping past every opponent without the slightest evidence you were ever there. But doing that means not engaging with most of the powers and any of the combat.

Having the option to follow a ghost playstyle is great. But when the game sets up a bunch of really fun mechanics, then punishes you for engaging with those mechanics in exactly the way they were designed to be engaged with, that just sucks.

Voroxpete, 5 dni temu

I’d be happy with either option. If you’re going to punish the player for not doing perfect (eg, no kill) stealth, don’t tease them with a bunch of really exciting combat mechanics. If you’re going to include all the exciting combat mechanics, don’t punish people for using them.

Voroxpete, 5 dni temu

There’s also a lot of stuff throughout the game about how the city gets more corrupted, more rats everywhere, that sort of thing. Some of this makes some stuff harder, some of it is just vibes. But all of it is the designers very noticeably wagging their finger under your nose for engaging with the mechanics they made and actively encouraged you to engage with.

Voroxpete, 5 dni temu

Do not cite the deep magics to me, I was there when they were written. I grew up on System Shock and Deus Ex, and that’s exactly why I found Dishonoured so hard to get into. Those other games gave the player a complete free choice in how to approach them, but Dishonoured doesn’t do that. It presents an apparently wide open field, but the moment you pick a particular path and set off down it, the game wags its finger and says “Oh no, not like that. That’s not how you’re supposed to play.”

Voroxpete, 19 dni temu

Usually. Enter The Matrix was one of the rare exceptions. That game genuinely slapped. The gameplay was crazy fun; it took all the slow-mo coolness of Max Payne and added wall-running, super jumps and martial arts. The combat was lots of fun, and the story was all written by the Wachowski’s to tie in with the second and third movie, including actual scenes that they filmed as part of the process. They took it really seriously, to them it was an essential part of the story.

Obviously the whole Matrix 2 & 3 saga has some problems, it’s not the Wachowski’s best work (how could it have been, they had a plot for one movie that they were told to expand into two), but the game is still a really fun entry in their ouvre.

Voroxpete, miesiąc temu

Ah yes, single player open world Helldivers.

Absolutely amazing game. Just Cause kind of captured some of the same energy, but never quite there. There’s nothing quite like being able to deploy cluster bomb strikes at will.

Voroxpete, miesiąc temu

Zone of the Enders was phenomenal.

Voroxpete, miesiąc temu

+1 for Burnout 3. That’s a series that desparately needs a new entry.

Voroxpete, miesiąc temu

This is an obscure one, and not high on most people’s lists, but my personal favourite PS2 game is Steel Lancer International, a game where you build mechs and take them into arena battles in a post-apocalyptic future.

Voroxpete, miesiąc temu

“I mean, they can’t get any worse, right?”

Spoiler alert: They can.

Don’t buy anything from EA, ever again.

Voroxpete, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

Embracer have never done anything ethical or sustainable in their entire existence. I really don’t think they’re going to start now.

Voroxpete, 2 miesiące temu

But what constitutes “RPG elements?” Because most of the time that seems to mean “crunchy stats”, which has absolutely nothing to do with “Roleplaying.” I’ve seen Call of Duty described as having “RPG elements” because you unlock perks.

Your average visual novel is more of a roleplay experience than half the CRPGs I’ve played. If reviewers mean “There’s very little player choice or input and you don’t really get to feel like you’re embodying a character” then yeah, that’s a valid criticism. If their complaint is that they didn’t get to put enough dots next to things, I’m not really sure how that’s a problem.

Voroxpete, 2 miesiące temu

Dread is legitimately one of the best horror RPGs ever created.

For those who don’t know, it’s a game of “Final girl” / “Cabin in the woods” style horror where terrible things happen to a group of people. The only mechanic the game has is a Jenga tower. Every time you want to do a risky action, you pull a brick. If the tower falls, something really bad happens. No other game has ever quite created such a perfect feeling of steadily mounting tension and… well… dread.

Voroxpete, 2 miesiące temu

It’s a tabletop RPG, not a video game.

Voroxpete, miesiąc temu

Well now I kind of want to see that.

Voroxpete, 2 miesiące temu

I mean, vaporware would require it to fail to manifest. There is a game. You can play it right now. Has it delivered on everything they promised? Absolutely not. But that was never the definition of vaporware. And, paradoxically, what’s there, despite being far reduced from the theoretical scope, is also one the most technically impressive games ever made. Entire planets in a complete solar system that you can traverse without a single loading screen. Not even a disguised one. It’s also, y’know, a buggy janky mess that still lacks many core gameplay features.

Like, there’s so much that you could legitimately criticise about Star Citizen that resorting to the both meaningless and innacurate claim of vaporware just shows an extreme lack of imagination. If you want to be critical go for it, but surely you can come up with something more coherent than that?

Voroxpete, 2 miesiące temu

The airship is what sold me. I’ve wanted ships in Minecraft for as long as I’ve been playing Minecraft, both because it’s cool, and because I think survival games would really benefit from the idea of a mobile base. Being able to take your home with you is such a huge deal and really bridges the gap between the “cosy” and “adventure” aspects of these games.

Voroxpete, 3 miesiące temu

This game looks awesome. People who’ve gotten their hands on it are saying great things.

But in absolutely no way should you pre-order it.

Voroxpete, 3 miesiące temu

BRB ADDING THIS TO MY ZOMBOID SERVER IMMEDIATELY

Voroxpete, 3 miesiące temu

I’ve been spending a little more time with Forever Winter.

Its very definitely early access; not the bullshit “We’re releasing the game, but calling it early access so you can’t complain about any bugs you find” stuff you get now but actual real old school Minecraft style early access where you’re basically getting alpha builds straight from the developer.

That said, it’s in much better shape than it was when I first looked into it (maybe a year ago?). Game is really fun to play, unbelievably tense, but without being too punishing. I think they’re really starting to zero in on that Dark Souls sweet spot where dying sucks, but not in a way that actually sets you back all that much. The stealth gameplay feels good, and getting out with a haul of loot is intensely satisfying.

Plus the art design is unbelievably good.

Voroxpete, 3 miesiące temu

I came here to say this exact same thing. Videogames are an art form, and the history of that art should be preserved, both the successes and the failures. People should be able to look back on what was a hit and what was flop, on the ideas that worked and the ones that didn’t, on the well made games and the badly made games. All of it matters, all of it is part of the same story.

Voroxpete, 4 miesiące temu

For the record (mostly saying this for the benefit of people who don’t play but might) Zomboid is one of the most customizable games ever. Rules like “How zombie virus transmits” are completely up to you. My wife and I play together and we decided that all survivors are immune to the virus in our world, so we turned off transmission entirely. It just made more sense to us if it was something like an airborne pathogen.

I often describe Project Zomboid as a toolkit for creating your own personal zombie apocalypse.

Voroxpete, 4 miesiące temu

Basically everything can be set through server / game rules. How do zombies work (speed, strength, toughness, hearing, vision, nocturnal or not, memory, intelligence, etc), how does the virus work, loot availability, XP gain, how long its been since the outbreak, whether power and water should shut off at some point, and so many other things. And that’s all without even touching a single mod. It’s incredibly versatile.

Voroxpete, 4 miesiące temu

Was 100% going to buy it. Absolutely won’t now. Fuck em.

Voroxpete, 5 miesięcy temu

Ghost Wire: Tokyo.

It sells itself on cool aesthetics, but the moment you get past that you realise it’s just a very, very generic open world shooter with incredibly bland and boring shooting layered over an impressively faithful recreation of Shinjuku. And even the aesthetics wear thin very quickly, being largely just a whole lot of “Hey I know that anime” level stuff cribbed from Japanese culture. The game is mostly just running around a map collecting stuff.

Voroxpete, 5 miesięcy temu

I mean, that’s exactly what makes it so “mid” to my mind. It’s not an atrocious disaster like Gollum. It’s not appalling bad, or even moderately bad. It’s just mid. The shooting isn’t dreadful, just dull. The map, the movement, the exploration… None of it is exactly bad, but none of it left any kind of impression on me. Like you said, it scratches that “running around and collecting stuff” itch, the numbers go up, you unlock new powers, etc. But it all just kind of passes straight through you and at the end you’re left with “Well, that sure did kill a few hours.”

Horizon: Zero Dawn suffers from all the usual modern open world hallmarks, the map littered with things to collect, the towers, the grinding to level up abilities, etc, etc. But the story is an absolute banger, and even a lot of the random collectible junk is full of little moments of deeply moving storytelling. I remember collecting every single one of the vantage points because I absolutely needed to hear all of the short story you unlock by doing it. It has zero relevance to the plot, but it’s just a great piece of writing. In comparison Ghost Wire is just, sort of… There.

Voroxpete, 5 miesięcy temu

I’m here to say Portal as well, specifically because, once you really look for it, you realise that about 90% of the game is tutorial. Like, seriously, basically everything leading up to “The cake is a lie” is teaching you the skills you need for the final sequence. It’s a massive tutorial followed by one level of actual game, and it’s beautiful, precisely because you don’t even notice that the tutorial hasn’t ended.

Voroxpete, 5 miesięcy temu

“Capitalism is when pay money for things. I am very smart.”

Jesus Christ, I am begging people to actually learn what capitalism is before writing takes likes this.

Voroxpete, 5 miesięcy temu

Given how good a job they did with 40K, I’m confident.

Voroxpete, 5 miesięcy temu

Port que no los dos?

Voroxpete, 5 miesięcy temu

Well, yeah, that’s fair

Voroxpete, 5 miesięcy temu

I’m really not sure what you mean by this. Are you talking about the game at release, or after they patched in all the intended content?

Outside of what I assume you mean by the “scripted gameplay” of the main story there are dozens upon dozens of side quests and weird little points of interest to discover (well over a hundred, easily). A lot of them help to elaborate on the setting in interesting ways. What exactly were you expecting that the game didn’t deliver on?

Voroxpete, 5 miesięcy temu

None of what you’ve just said connects back to your previous comment in the slightest. You started by saying that they cut too much from the TTRPG and that the world was too shallow, and then when I asked you to elaborate you just went on about augmentation systems.

At this point I’m not convinced you actually know what it is that you don’t like about it.

Voroxpete, 5 miesięcy temu

This was a triumph…

Voroxpete, 5 miesięcy temu

Seriously, why do they let him talk? The man is a walking PR disaster.

Then again, we should all be asking how the hell he’s not in jail for possession of child porn, so I guess this is a pretty minor thing in comparison.

Voroxpete, 5 miesięcy temu

I’m actually OK with games costing a bit more to sell if they cost a lot to make; god knows, the devs deserve to get paid properly. But, one, that money won’t actually make it to the devs, and two, any time Randy Pitchford is for something it’s really hard not to automatically be against it, on the assumption that he’s so consistently wrong about everything, and just such an unbelievable piece of shit, that just assuming he’s in the wrong is the safest bet.

Voroxpete, 6 miesięcy temu

Jesus Christ, he’s still alive?! I haven’t heard that name in years.

For those not blessed with the knowledge of our divine Lord and saviour Derek Smart, God’s gift to fame designers, oh boy, grab your popcorn, this is going to be good.

And by “good” I mean that whatever Derek has come up with will manage to be the most objectively terrible version of that thing possible, and he will aggressively defend it as the greatest thing that has ever happened in the history of everything, ever.

Voroxpete, 6 miesięcy temu

Who are definitely real people and not his sock puppet accounts.

Voroxpete, 7 miesięcy temu

For the record, I use a mouse with my non-dominant hand and I can play even fast paced FPS games like Titanfall competently enough. I actually used to dominate on Splitgate for a while. It’s a skill that can be learned. I have the advantage of having done it my whole life and I fully acknowledge that’s hard to replicate, but I think that with some practice anyone should be able to get to the point where they can play slower, primarily mouse driven games like turn based RPGs. Real time with pause might also be doable if you bind the pause button to the mouse (a mouse with some extra bindable keys would really help here). Anyway, just a thought.

If those options don’t work, maybe look into games like Vampire Survivor, or Realm of The Mad God (though I think the latter does need some rapid mouse inputs when looting, so maybe not so good).

Voroxpete, 8 miesięcy temu

Yeah, killing Nazis is always good. And very cathartic.

Voroxpete, 9 miesięcy temu

And so they bloody well should be! How the fuck else are we going to find out about cool, unique indie projects instead of mass produced corporate slop?

Independent creators should absolutely be encouraged to self promote in communities like this, or else what the fuck are we doing here? Just shilling for Activision?

Voroxpete, 9 miesięcy temu

Congratulations, I can only imagine how good this feels. Nice to have some payoff for all your hard work.

Voroxpete, 9 miesięcy temu

I definitely want to see this version of self promotion encouraged. I think it’s good and healthy for this community to be a place where creators can discuss cool projects, engage with their fans and solicit feedback, as long as they’re doing so in a way that respects the health of the community. I think the accommodations you’ve chosen to make / demand here are very reasonable.

Voroxpete, 9 miesięcy temu

They won’t, because loot boxes are their main source of income.

And this is exactly why “good companies” like Valve cannot save us. Good companies will never be a substitute for good regulations.

Voroxpete, 10 miesięcy temu

IIRC the reason for this is that China requires that games published there be published by entities that are at least some arbitrary percentage Chinese owned. So basically if you want access to that huge market - that loves video games - you have to cut a deal with Tencent or someone else like them.

Voroxpete, 10 miesięcy temu

Hell Let Loose, Squad, Insurgency, The Finals, Titanfall 2 (yes, it’s back), Space Marine 2 if you can live with third person.

Voroxpete, 10 miesięcy temu

There’s a bar in my town whose gimmick is all their original arcade and pinball machines. Including Missile Command. God that game is stressful.

Voroxpete, 10 miesięcy temu

If you enjoyed Control, I highly recommend Signalis. Similarly creepy, unsettling vibes from everything, lots of exploration and really tense combat, and a story that holds enough back to keep you wondering.