2023 VIDEO GAME CATCH ALL THREAD

[Casey]

I’m a little surprised that a looter shooter like Borderlands’ (the first one anyway) main story can be completed in just under 25 hours. I would have thought they’d make it longer and more grindy.

That campaign felt really bare bones. And I wasn’t even sure what the story was most of the time besides “get some vault keys”. Hopefully the prequel game tells me why I should care about the vaults. That’s my next game up on the SteamDeck.

[SirSmUgly]

The Pre-Sequel should be played after Borderlands 2, I think.

Or not at all since it kinda sucks.

[Casey]

20 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

The Pre-Sequel should be played after Borderlands 2, I think.

Or not at all since it kinda sucks.

Everything I’ve read says after 1 but before 2, but all the articles and stuff are about chronological order. I might do release order, I’m not sure yet.

[odessasteps]

 

[SirSmUgly]

57 minutes ago, Casey said:

Everything I’ve read says after 1 but before 2, but all the articles and stuff are about chronological order. I might do release order, I’m not sure yet.

Yeah, Pre-Sequel comes before two chronologically, but I think playing them in release order is more effective. YMMV.

[Raziel]

If I learned anything between the Resident Evils, Assassin's Creeds, and Metal Gears, it's play in release order.  

[Death From Above]

I would play release order because Pre-Sequel references the second game a fair amount.

[tbarrie]

I got back to Return to Monkey Island after that puzzle that annoyed me. Part III was pretty short and easy, and I felt at that point I was rushing towards the climax too quickly. But I needn't have worried, because it seems Part IV is a beast. I expect I'll be plugging away at this for a while yet.

[Matt D]

I'm making slow progress on OOT but do feel like this first generation of 3D gaming is the one that's aged the worst. They were overly ambitious in what they were trying to accomplish when it came to camera angles and control schemes. The only other thing I can think of that so negatively impacted gaming was when they introduced voice acting and little animated movements into RPGs but didn't make it easy to skip through them to your speed of reading so you were stuck with large swatches of the game as a captive audience instead of a player (I'm thinking the first release of FFX for instance).

[SirSmUgly]

2 hours ago, Matt D said:

I'm making slow progress on OOT but do feel like this first generation of 3D gaming is the one that's aged the worst. They were overly ambitious in what they were trying to accomplish when it came to camera angles and control schemes. The only other thing I can think of that so negatively impacted gaming was when they introduced voice acting and little animated movements into RPGs but didn't make it easy to skip through them to your speed of reading so you were stuck with large swatches of the game as a captive audience instead of a player (I'm thinking the first release of FFX for instance).

This is my issue with Super Mario 64, an otherwise great game. The issue with the N64 games is that the controller was single-analog. Sega Saturn had worse 3D games, but they were the company smart enough to drop an early dual-analog controller. Sony was, too. Nintendo really borked it there. 

I still love, love, love the N64, but yeah, their games were rough, camera-wise. 

[Raziel]

7 minutes ago, SirSmUgly said:

Nintendo really borked it there. 

 

I mean, that's pretty much their slogan outside of Gens 3, 4 and 6.  And even 6 is questionable (at least for the controller, the GameCube itself was a nice piece of hardware.)

[SirSmUgly]

4 minutes ago, Raziel said:

I mean, that's pretty much their slogan outside of Gens 3, 4 and 6.  And even 6 is questionable (at least for the controller, the GameCube itself was a nice piece of hardware.)

Can that really be their slogan when they've built up a mountain of IP that are damn-near Disney level across all those generations and even when they have a failed piece of hardware, they're able to be financially secure enough to just come back and dominate with a new piece of hardware?

Now if you had said that it was Sega's slogan or even Microsoft's slogan...

[assfax]

Everspace 2 is getting a most highest recommendation from me.  You'll go into an area, blow up some badguys, then it's just peaceful exploration.  Yer just billions of miles away and nobody's buggin' you.  Kinda reminds me of Warhawk on PS1.  Y'know, that third level where you fly into the big battleships.  It's not really a dogfighting game.  More 6DOF UFO loot-RPG.  It's striking a real good balance making sure I'm finding new shit without over or under feeding me.  Sometimes it feels like you are in a long, sustained Star Trek TNG cold open.  You'll be going around a big asteroid all warily and thinking Picard thoughts.

[Coletti]

Still haven't finished Sifu but I've got two games going across my PS4 & 5 and I seriously hope the developers can do a spiritual sequel with a similar vibe and more levels and bosses. Game fucking RULES. 

Once that's done I can get back to Nier, Celeste, and the incoming H:FW expansion. Videogames are amazing. 

[John E. Dynamite]

On 4/15/2023 at 8:44 AM, Casey said:

I’m a little surprised that a looter shooter like Borderlands’ (the first one anyway) main story can be completed in just under 25 hours. I would have thought they’d make it longer and more grindy.

That campaign felt really bare bones. And I wasn’t even sure what the story was most of the time besides “get some vault keys”. Hopefully the prequel game tells me why I should care about the vaults. That’s my next game up on the SteamDeck.

I made a big list of games I was more than half done with - Borderlands was on it, so I beat it.

Fascinatingly good idea on a fascinatingly boring platter. I understand the aesthetic choices of the game - barren wastlelands and cel shading seem so disparate but they were both responses to the technology of the time. But my God there didn't even need to be a story. Every time I read the blurb explaining why I was doing a mission, I felt like I was wasting my time. And as was common during the normification of internet humor, no fucking joke lands. The writing shoots a thousand consecutive airballs. 

But going pew pew with your collection of randomly generated, totally different weapons and watching your level go up is still enough to carry the gameplay for 25 hours or whatever. Borderlands 2 is another one of those superior 00's sequels I need to play. Along with Sly Cooper 2, Ratchet & Clank 2, Uncharted, God Of War, probably a buncha others.

[SirSmUgly]

Borderlands 2 is still very edgelord-ish in its humor, but it's a bit more diverse in the settings that you spend time shootin' stuff in and the main villain is very much effective because he's the biggest edgelord of the whole game, so you're motivated to finally shoot him. 

I mean, he does some plot-related bad stuff too, but none of it landed with me because I can't imagine caring about any of the characters from these games in any real way. 

[Contentious C]

Man, if you didn't pour one out for Bloodwing, you're not my friend (and I didn't even really like BL2).

Edited April 18, 2023 by Contentious C

[Zimbra]

Borderlands 2 is a real land of contrasts.  It combines a lot of absolutely dogshit meme humor next to some of the best character beats of the whole series.  It improves the gameplay in almost every way, but added slag which totally breaks the endgame balance.

[SirSmUgly]

Fair point.

Though IMO Tiny Tina is an abomination to video games, media, or really the concept of characters in fiction as a whole. I almost put the game down when she showed up. 

[John E. Dynamite]

On 4/17/2023 at 9:56 AM, Matt D said:

I'm making slow progress on OOT but do feel like this first generation of 3D gaming is the one that's aged the worst. They were overly ambitious in what they were trying to accomplish when it came to camera angles and control schemes. The only other thing I can think of that so negatively impacted gaming was when they introduced voice acting and little animated movements into RPGs but didn't make it easy to skip through them to your speed of reading so you were stuck with large swatches of the game as a captive audience instead of a player (I'm thinking the first release of FFX for instance).

I wouldn't say I *love* figuring out how to handle PS1/N64 jank, but I am glad I've convinced myself that it's all another puzzle to be solved. In OOT I settled on tapping Z frequently and running directly forward whenever possible. Only way to make the "platforming" work the way you want it to.

[RIPPA]

4 hours ago, SirSmUgly said:

Fair point.

Though IMO Tiny Tina is an abomination to video games, media, or really the concept of characters in fiction as a whole. I almost put the game down when she showed up. 

Yet the Tiny Tina DLC is one of the best DLCs I have ever played in any video game ever

[SirSmUgly]

14 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Yet the Tiny Tina DLC is one of the best DLCs I have ever played in any video game ever

Are you talking about the fantasy one from Borderlands 2?

I did not much care for it.

I know they did a whole-ass follow-up game based on it, so I accept that many more people liked it compared to me. For some people, it sort of saved Tiny Tina as a character. I think for me, Gearbox asking me to suddenly care about the deep feelings

Spoiler

and need to grieve/abandonment issues

of Tiny Tina was much too much. I didn't buy any of it. I think the very edgelordish approach to everything in the game really undercut any possibility that I would. And since I don't like D&D or Western fantasy as a setting, that part didn't grab me either.

YMMV. To me, Tiny Tina will always be the irritating character with the insultingly comical blaccent whom I just cannot abide. 

[Kevin Wilson]

I thought the Tiny Tina character was great in BL 2, awful in BL 3, and back to 'good' for the Tiny Tina standalone game. Although the entire series is very polarizing, I think everyone of note of that has played them all agrees that Borderlands 2 is the best of the bunch since it takes the best parts of original Borderlands but the story/dialogue really went off the rails for Borderlands 3.

[odessasteps]

Lego Sonic

 

[John E. Dynamite]

On 4/19/2023 at 2:57 PM, odessasteps said:

Lego Sonic

 

I thought the talented-but-corporately-shoehorned developers of the LEGO games franchise were gonna make a game with the iconic-but-haplessly-developed Sonic franchise and this isn't that and fuck me if I didn't just find a whole new way to be dissappointed by a Sonic game. That doesn't even exist!

Edited April 22, 2023 by John E. Dynamite