all-knight-party

all-knight-party, rok temu

Well, you confirmed some of my fears. I'm sure I'll still enjoy it when I play it eventually, but the mech game genre has been in starvation mode for a long time and it doesn't seem like AC6 will be able to really scratch that itch.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Bethesda's "good stories" have always been moreso the player's stories of cobbled together mechanics as a a result of their playstyle/current abilities, gear, and motivation.

Most of the time it might be rote open world questing with some enjoyable grind loop, but there are a lot of particular memories I love, like robbing the Red Diamond jewelry store in Oblivion's Imperial City, "casing" the place by day as a customer and purchasing a necklace, purely to experience the joy of breaking in at 3 AM and robbing it blind.

The joy and hilarity I felt when I came back the day after I'll always remember. Entering the store to see the shopkeep, beaming at his new customer, all of his shelves and cases completely fucking empty, as he vacantly grinned at me, buck naked as id stolen the clothes right out of his sleeping pockets.

I've stolen a lot of shit in that game, but that one was good. It's incredibly rare for me to remember Bethesda's actual character moments that fondly, as they've always come off plastic and rehearsed in some combination of writing, voice acting, and rigid animation. Sometimes they almost reach a good story, like some popular side quest chains, or Paladin Danse's personal quests.

So, I think these two games tell their best culminational "stories" in different fundamental ways, and I think it's neat how each one's best potential narrative, whether written or otherwise, is a marriage of the game's possibilities and the player's motivation and intent. But you're probably right, BG3 can tell a lot more, better stories than my idiotic repetitive Bethesda adventures, but I do like some pulp.

all-knight-party, rok temu

They know how to pick 'em. I would love to see the Darkness return.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Getting back into Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. I'm about at the end of the game and I've really enjoyed playing a portable full on stealth game. Its scope is quite limited, what with it being a PSP game, but it actually serves to breed a pretty easygoing stealth game with not too much of a cost for getting caught and pretty limited sound and sight ranges to match the small level sections.

While it's totally limited it's actually a bit refreshing compared to how tight being stealthy can be in even the home console MGS games.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Man, "15 hours in and not a single bug." I love Bethesda, but I feel like that's an incredibly bold claim to make and that his definition of bug is probably a bit loose. I wish they wouldn't make this big of a hubbub about it and just let the game speak for itself if it's really that solid.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Exactly. By pointing a big red arrow at the problem they've historically had to the point of memory it just serves to make the skeptics more skeptical and create concern in everybody else since it's just a big "source: trust me, bro".

We'll just have to see.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I quit playing when they started sunsetting planets, what was disliked about Lightfall?

all-knight-party, rok temu (edited rok temu)

It's that sort of feeling that the game is this weird, organic beast that feeds on the "subscriber base" that caused me to leave in the first place.

Sad it worked out that way with Lightfall's release, but if Destiny wants to be such a good game that the ideal player buys everything, then it has to be that damn good to do so. And it can be, but not always.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Let them know I'm taking that for my new band name.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Probably a case of TLOU having less impact for those who already played the game compared to Sonic Boom which is those characters in situations that are new compared to the games.

all-knight-party, rok temu

And bring back touch screen inventory management. Beyond me why they didn't take advantage of their own console's features when they'd already done that in all past possible games.

all-knight-party, rok temu

The same conversation Limbo started to kick off when they released that back in the day. Quite short, but when you enjoy each moment that much, how can you attempt to assign a dollar to hour value? You just can't always diminish it to something that simple.

In terms of saying whether it's "the best of all time", well, it could certainly be one of the best of all time, but you really can't put it in front of or beside games doing radically different things. Youd have to start making a few wide umbrellas of games to place together and then rank them from there. Perhaps something like Unravel would be more comparable with something like Inside or Limbo.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I don't totally understand the reasoning behind Pokemon Sleep needing to be a thing, but Pokemon Go's entire core premise requires knowing your location in order for the gameplay to even work at all, so I could understand having an issue with wanting to share your location, but damn, that's pretty much the one case where that'd be understandable.

all-knight-party, rok temu

You should try Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. I think it's up to 4 players, but essentially you both walk around a 2D side perspective ship and can control the different weapons and power systems.

You both have to run from station to station to navigate a large area and fight and defend from enemies and accomplish tasks. It starts easy and gets actually quite hard despite the art style. Cooperation is vital.

I'd also recommend Cook Serve Delicious, either the second or third, both are great games for one or two players. You essentially run a kitchen on a day by day basis. You have a menu of items you must cook for customers that come in throughout the day. Cooking requires pressing combinations of buttons to add ingredients depending on the customer's special order for the item.

In between customer orders you have to handle cleaning tasks and there are rush hours throughout the day where tons of customers arrive. When it's going full tilt you're rapidly taking orders, putting food together, and sending out food, it's extremely fun and as challenging as you want it to be since you can choose what you want to have on the menu if you'd like.

I like that you're purely focused on making the food and accomplishing tasks unlike Overcooked where the challenge is more about getting the ingredients from place to place and having only two players makes it ultra difficult. CSD scales much better to the amount of players.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Christ, theft of property "$2,500-$10,000". That's a lot of copies.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Seems sort of weird. They say "when we make a deal we expect prioritization of AMD features" but that they don't explicitly say you can't add DLSS. I think that's too much grey area to say for sure, especially when the one saying it is on one side.

all-knight-party, rok temu

No, he also stole a bunch of copies and sold them. A good few thousand dollars worth.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Skyrim with actually good melee combat, much greater magic variety, companions who are smarter and not suicidal, horses who can move around with logical sense, more biome variety as much as I love what's already there, factions that don't end in you ruling all of them at once...

Turns out Skyrim gets a lot right but there are tons of things that could be much better.

all-knight-party, rok temu

That would indeed be pretty cool, I'd love to see if they go that route for TES 6. Clearly the FO76/ESO routes are not what that same customer base wants, for different reasons.

ESO is a fine MMO, but it's absolutely an MMO and not a multiplayer TES game. FO76 is a skeleton of a Bethesda RPG but isn't formatted at all how what the average Bethesda fan would want to play. It's strange they went both of these routes before attempting what people have been asking for and even trying to make themselves for so long.

It's a bit of a shame Starfield won't include multiplayer either, but it's hard for me to complain since I don't have friends anyway.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I actually have not even played it, but I've heard it's been much improved, correct me if I'm wrong though it's still different from literally Fallout 4 with other players. For example, are there multiple long faction storylines, large populated cities with many side quests, a few radio stations, caravans, morality or faction reputation, bobbleheads, basically every major and minor feature in a standard Bethesda Fallout.

If it's been updated enough times and in the right directions to include all that stuff, then awesome. I was by no means saying it was a bad game, I just want to know if it's seamlessly a Bethesda title through and through with other players or if it's still Fallout in a different direction.

Are you able to enjoy the world privately with only players you choose without any DLC or microtransactions based restrictions on construction or storage, mod support so long as each player maintain the same modlist, etc.?

all-knight-party, rok temu

I really dig that art style, it's sort of the logical conclusion to things like Diablo 2 or Age of Empires 2. Something about the high fidelity 2D rendering of 3D objects from an isometric perspective is so aesthetically pleasing.

It feels more descriptive of the reality of the world and less stylized even though it's, of course, its own style.

all-knight-party, rok temu (edited 10 miesięcy temu)

I'm not sure what you mean. Saints Row 4's large criticism was that it was too different from SR's heritage what with being a super hero game instead of GTA on crack. Past that Gat out of Hell isn't a mainline title and was even further out there, and then Agents of Mayhem wasn't even a Saints game, and I enjoyed the hell out of that game's unique merits.

The SR reboot was the first real Saints Row release since 3, so you could say that it didn't do enough different (which I can't speak for, I didn't play it), but saying the series hasn't done anything new since 3 is not correct. Whether those games were super great or not is a different discussion, but they were doing something different, unless you just didn't specify between something different for the series or something different from all other video games.

all-knight-party, rok temu

It had flaws, but I found the three hero swapping mechanic pretty fun, especially due to each one having a class that made them better or worse against certain enemies, and I loved the whole triple jumping thing, combat felt unique and fun.

The rest of the game has a lot of not so awesome bits, but I found it absolutely good enough to warrant an improved sequel. Hopefully they do something with it one day.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Isn't some of the issue there that just because they don't have plans now doesn't preclude them from deciding down the line to do something? If they release that all for free then later ports or things of that nature directly lose value.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I'd agree with that, there should be a stricter standard on that stuff across the board with media.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Eager to watch this video now! The first one is a phenomenally unique rogue like and very fun, basically if Deus Ex were a top down rogue like and didn't take itself seriously

all-knight-party, rok temu

Uh oh, looks like all the Borderlands games are illegal. Gearbox better watch out

all-knight-party, rok temu

Well, sure, it sucks at teaching you. But you can learn enough through the tutorial and checking stat and item descriptions to be able to learn and discover the rest on your own, you won't get to a spot where you have absolutely no idea what to do, and if you do, you havent explored the available space.

Part of that game's specific appeal when it released was that most other games at the time treated you like a child that needed every detail explained for you to learn and enjoy yourself, they grabbed your head and said "go RIGHT here, right now". It both sucks as a tutorial, but succeeds at establishing a baseline level of expected effort, resilience, perseverance, and experimentation from the player.

That game specifically is not trying to thoroughly teach you how it works. Its job is to provide a world and mechanics that provide a sandbox for you to roll around and suss it out for yourself.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Can't believe it's not in here yet, but Monster Hunter. I find the eventual understanding of the gameplay loop to not actually be as complex as I thought it'd be, but getting a good overview of all what you want to do and use isn't really possible even in the latest entries, just specific information about specific mechanics.

all-knight-party, rok temu

It's hard to talk about Elden Ring's learning experience the same way since by that point the world had enjoyed around four or so similarly constructed From Soft souls like games that had entered the cult popular internet gaming vernacular.

It was no longer as uniquely obtuse as Dark Souls was at its time. But yes, it does teach better, and is more straightforward in a lot of ways, it aligns more with most gamers' common understanding. It has a map.

And I'm not saying Dark Souls is entirely impervious to the argument that it's obtuse, I mean look at the resistance stat. What I'm saying is that you can understand enough to become intrigued by the world and become hooked if it's your sort of game. At the point that you really get hung up you've got incentive to discuss it with others and do that legwork.

It gets you into the game well enough while also establishing that you may totally have some mental hoops to jump through later. If there were to be some Dark Souls full remake with some arguable quality of life improvements, I'd bet there'd be a number of areas you could make less obtuse while still preserving a sense of genuine discovery, and that'd be a very fun "ethical" discussion as well with so much grey area to be had.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Oh yes, legendarily awful. And again, I don't find it that impenetrable in the end, the delivery of the info is just so bad. If anybody wants to get into MH I'd love to help because I absolutely love the series now, but it took concentrated effort to teach myself without anyone to guide me.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Continuing my first time playthrough of Apollo Justice on my way through the rest of the Ace Attorney series.

And returning to Death Stranding since I beat the game to max out the prepper shelters (mission givers) and to slowly work towards Legend of Legends (completing every single repeatable mission on "hard" mode).

Now that the story is over Death Stranding is a fantastic "throw on a podcast and grind" kind of game. Very soothing.

Still working through side quests in Borderlands 3 as well. Really enjoying the shooting in this one. As acclaimed as 2 is, I just couldn't stand the shooting model until at least Pre Sequel, but 3's shooting genuinely feels quite good now.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I'm a PC player so I probably won't get to play the second one for quite a long time, but I'm excited as well. Kojima doesn't usually iterate in a straightforward manner in sequels, so it's hard to know just quite what we'll get out of it.

Death Stranding was already one of the most novel and interesting games I've ever played in both story and gameplay, so I'm glad we'll get to see some more of it.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Funny, I've been replaying the Mass Effect trilogy as well (through Legendary edition), and I'm also on Mass Effect 2. ME 1 holds up more decently than I expected with the LE changes, but ME 2 is just such a better game in almost every way. Really enjoying spending time with these characters again. Even with other games going on you can always hop back in and do a mission or two in ME 2, the save system lets you make some good progress even if you don't have a ton of time. Femshep for life.

all-knight-party, rok temu

As a kid I endlessly replayed the original trilogy and never wanted to try Apollo because "I thought his hair looked dumb", so after trying it now and realizing that even with a new character it's still Ace Attorney I won't be skipping any other games.

So yes, I'll be doing the Edgeworth Investigations next! I'm excited. Eventually I'll make my way through the 3DS titles and then to Great Ace Attorney too.

all-knight-party, rok temu

They won't go away, but you will eventually learn and see where they are. Sometimes you'll have to engage them, a lot of the time you can get around them.

They're not in all areas, but you will be able to understand how to deal with them and once you can fight back you can handle them.

I was terrified by them in the beginning and didn't want to have to deal with them, but now I really think they're cool and enjoy taking them down. You really go from helpless and confused to knowledgeable and prepared.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Yeah, I have no idea what this game is or how to help OP. Just based off the screenshot it's a sort of multiplayer turn based game in which each player possibly has a time limit to make their turn in order to keep the game moving and OP has dramatically less time to make a turn than other players without obvious reason.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Emergent gameplay is a big part of what makes video games unique as a medium. I'd say a good example I've played recently is Death Stranding. One of my favorite games of all time at this point, it really is best and worst described as a walking simulator. Or moreso, a delivery simulator. At its core, you'll take on missions involving the delivery of different amounts and sizes/weights of packages to destinations near and far. Sometimes there are invisible ghosts that want to kill you, sometimes there's visible, inanimate landscape that wants to kill you.

What takes it from 'walking simulator' to 'walking simulator' is the fact that the walking is complex. The smoothness or roughness of terrain can directly influence the stability of your character. Even small rocks can be marginally trickier to traverse than truly flat ground. You may find pavement, dirt, rocky terrain, snow, or deep rivers, which require considerations. You can brace yourself for stability to help, and your movement speed, momentum when changing direction, and whether you're standing or crouching all affect your likelihood to slip or trip. Many items help you to move off the beaten path and find shorter routes, with ladders or climbing rope & anchors allowing the scaling or descent of steep cliffs.

Through experimentation, sliding helplessly down a mountain, and having all your important shit get washed away in a river as you scramble around like an infant, you come to understand your mobility and limitations. Enter: the packages and your hubris. You can accept multiple missions at a time. Some missions require few or relatively light packages. Some ask you to move an amount of goods that ought to be palletized. Through understanding your limitations, and attempting to slap different amounts of cargo on your person, you can possess Icarus and fly as close to the sun as you want.

But, there's more than just your person. You can use floating sci fi wheelbarrows that trail behind you, carrying a large amount of goods, but restricting your ability to use climbing ropes or ladders. You could use a motorcycle, allowing for speedy traversal and some light offroading with small storage on "saddlebags", or even a huge ass truck which affords incredible storage potential, at the cost of a squirrelly and incline averse driving model.

And I haven't even really gotten into all of the equipment or strategies required to handle the "ghosts", whose unique abilities and behavior provide an interesting additional challenge where being caught by one could easily mean the loss of your cargo, or even your life. Even in the big ass truck, you aren't truly safe. The intermittent and locational time-accelerating rainfall means even cargo you haven't dropped or bumped can have its durability rusted away given some time.

Though the game, of course, has a story, it sits alongside a story of the player's experience, limited only by the bravery and recklessness with which you, essentially, don't want to make three trips to the car to bring groceries in, so you load up yourself and two linked floating carriers to carry nearly 1,000 kilograms of cargo, and make a winding, manually waypointed journey through the desolate and oppressive landscape, stopping to deliver parts of your massive load as you come to each post-apocalyptic shelter in your list of deliveries.

Your successes and failures within are unique to the way you chose to plan and execute your trips. Shit, man, I like this game.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Oh wow, a fixed economy? I suppose that depends just how many places there are to actually trade with. I'm curious how much this game can hold up as a "space sim lite", and hearing that the prices are fixed is a little sad.

Using custom modules to block ship scanning is interesting, I'm hoping those module slots are limited and you can't just hide from scans on any ship by using the same module.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Man, I haven't played Frontier Defense in ages. I really liked that mode but I felt like it needed some more gameplay time on foot before everyone gets their mechs. It felt like 10-90 split of on foot to mech time.

all-knight-party, rok temu

The studio has changed. Just because Fallout 4 wasn't a "true RPG" doesn't mean I didn't have nigh on 400 hours of novel joy with it, maybe even because it wasn't just another core Bethesda RPG but because it was something new, a new kind of looting and crafting experience in that same large, dynamic open world that Bethesda could bring through. Morrowind was over 20 years ago. Bethesda isn't the one making those kinds of games anymore.

Have the games gotten shallower as RPGs? Sure. Fucking pac man is shallow at this point, does that mean everyone should hate on it en masse? If you don't like the direction Bethesda is going that's completely understandable, but it just seems absurd that people come out of the woodwork in these threads to just poop on a game that isn't even out yet. Save that for when it releases and it does or doesn't meet your expectations, as of now it just sounds like everybody is trying to get as entrenched as possible in their prejudice.

Bethesda games are buggy, what an old meme. It's more of a meme than a true criticism now because most games have bugs, especially ones as large as Bethesda games, and even on launch I've played other Bethesda games and enjoyed myself just fine. It's good to be cautiously skeptical and not pre order, you should be skeptical, but swinging all the way past that to being hard-line negative is not the right answer either.

And I know you personally are not reflecting all of these views, your comment just comes off as supportive of both genuine and over the top memetic criticisms due to replying in a seemingly justifying manner to someone confused about the buggy game comments. When it comes to those sorts of comments I'm talking generally about what I've seen from people on this platform.

I'm not saying Starfield will be an old Bethesda return to form or bug free on release, I'm just saying be cautious, not completely pedal to the metal negative, and accept that Bethesda as it was is dead.

all-knight-party, rok temu

It's a different game. I go back and enjoy FNV still and FO4 as well because it scratches a different itch. The looting, crafting, settlement construction, etc. are executed much much better than FNV or 3, or otherwise are entirely new mechanics. It's a whole different thing, it's the studio pedigree and franchise the games belong to that allow these criticisms to continue on even when you're comparing games that are radically different beneath the surface.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I understand your position as well, I think we just need to have more moderate discussions and less going to extremes.

I didn't address the writing and dialogue of the games because those are absolutely getting the short end of the stick in terms of what Bethesda is spending their resources on, but I found the systems that they put work into in Fallout 4 worthy enough of that time spent instead, and I think that says more about my preferences of what I like in a game than it really does about if Bethesda games are "better" or not this way.

I tend to prefer moment to moment gameplay and I found Fallout 4's complex interlocking loop of wanting to build a settlement and modify my equipment, leading to tracking down certain materials and identifying where they may be logically found, to going there on foot, to looting the place systematically and engaging the enemies with the weapons and armor I modified and have personal attachment to, to managing my inventory with an investment and thought that never mattered as much in previous Bethesda titles, etc.

That whole loop and set of mechanics that play into each other added an incredible wealth of what I consider more moment to moment gameplay depth than just enjoying the wider possibilities of dialogue options in past Bethesda titles.

Even at its best good old days Bethesda writing doesn't really compare to other games much more focused on writing (not going to mention New Vegas here because Obsidian is one of those devs better at writing than Bethesda). Bethesda games are always more than the sum of their parts.

My point about Pac Man is more that you don't dislike the game's lack of depth in certain areas just for its own sake, but because you're comparing it to the studio's past. When Pac Man Championship Edition and DX released, those
had favorable receptions because they took the arcadey roots of the franchise to their logical conclusion instead of swapping to more accessible gameplay trends as Bethesda did.

Not an invalid criticism, but not the only thing people should be mentioning in some of these comments as if that's what makes the game "bad".

And if you really think Starfield is going to be Fallout 4 with just a new coat of paint... That's just disingenuous. There's already more than enough changes in new mechanics and systems that didn't exist in FO4 aside from the entire new universe and premise that's more than simply a coat of paint.

I do hear what you're saying though and I appreciate acknowledging some of the parts people skip over thinking about just to hit the low hanging fruit that have been brought up in every thread about a Bethesda game since time immemorial, adding nothing new to the discussion.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I agree with everything you said. Though that's certainly not everything, that's a lot of the major issues that hold Bethesda games back from their potential.

I am actually glad that with Starfield radiant quests have been expanded to dynamically place quests in different locations. I think that, if it's taken advantage of, will go a long way towards the potential criticism of "1,000 planets and nothing to do on most of them" that I see as a possible issue with their scope.

Bethesda continually evolves and changes their radiant system with each release, but from Skyrim to Fallout 4 we saw the felt effects of that system stagnate and become padding instead of adding dynamic experiences as its original intent.

And since I didn't specifically mention the bugs in my other comments, Ive played plenty of non-bethesda open world games with plenty of bugs long after release, I feel they're a part of the whole deal and I excuse most of them unless they truly cant be worked around (things like losing your companions or getting stuck on geometry if you're a console player). I cease to excuse those bugs as soon as the gameplay requires things of you that the bugs prevent, such as the game being too janky to support the strict save system of vanilla FO4's survival mode, which is inexcusable.

I also worry, though, about mods. Because of how many players use mods extensively in Bethesda games it becomes tricky to know which bugs are inherent, which are from poorly made mods, and which are from conflicting mods. It muddies the waters of really pinning down what's going on. Just something that contributes to the bugginess of those games in a way that isn't very calculable, unless you're unmodded on console.

But if anything remotely as problematic as the survival mode stability is a factor in Starfield, I'd be much much less willing to forgive some bugs here and there. We'll just have to see.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I still go back and listen through the original Arrow Pointing Down/Giant Bombcast up until Ryan's passing. The age of the content makes it downright historically interesting now for their commentary on game releases.

The chemistry of those guys (Vinny and Brad included) is still untouchable, no one can rein Jeff in and play off him as well as Ryan did, and Ryan is by far my favorite person to ever grace that website and podcast, and rightfully so as it was his child with Jeff. Rest in peace.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Not biased at all

all-knight-party, rok temu

Oh definitely, if OP likes visual novels at all then there are tons of those to play, particular you'd have to pick ones with untimed gameplay or only choices like Steins;Gate, Phoenix Wright, or Raging Loop

all-knight-party, rok temu

Having played the shit out of Assassin's Creed Odyssey I can say that the game has tons of equipment skin variety without MTX, the game is balanced to not need them, even from a visual variety standpoint, there are tons and tons of equipment skins to collect and permanently unlock in that game