2015 VIDEO GAME CATCH-ALL THREAD

[AxB]

 

I'm playing Uncharted 2 right now, having just completed 1 (I already completed 3 first). So far 2 is a lot better than 1, because you can aim grenades without tilting your joypad all over the place. Too soon to say if it's better than 3 or not, but it seems a bit more coherent at least.

It's better. Wait till you get to the train sequence - maybe the best set piece in any game ever.

 

 

Having now completed the game - yes the train sequence is awesome. GTA has really spoiled me in terms of thinking it's not too hard to take out Attack Helicopters (or Tanks) when you're on foot.

[RandomAct]

I finished Axiom Verge yesterday and fuck I loved the game.  I found myself doing everything I could to 100% the game which I almost never do, and filled with glee anytime I found a new item, weapon or power up.  Highly recommend, and it's a good 20-23 hour game if you do everything.

[Big Fresh]

Speaking of Marvel games.... They released another on iOS called "Future Fight". It's pretty fun.

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

WESTERADO DOUBLE BARRELLED- when I was kid, there was this game my family was obsessed with on the genesis called King's Bounty. The main way gameplay happens is top-down strategy battles on a five by five grid, but in between that was intensive exploration to derive clues about the location of the King's lost scepter, so you can claim the Bounty (reductive storytelling 4 life). "You beat this boss, which uncovers this part of the treasure map. You found this, which gives you this part of the map." Neat idea, but overly gamey (why would having a ring make a treasure map clear). Westerado's gameplay loop is basically dodgeball with guns, but in between you are completing side missions for townfolk, and they're giving you clues to the physical description of the man who you are seeking revenge against. This is a perfected form of that neat idea, and on top of that it's pretty healthily bizarre and expansive. Through my first play through, there are giant sections of the map that I never explored at all, and knowing that the target of pursuit is going to change next time through is great. They also have a Permadeath mode. That's also fuckin' great. And the health system is getting your hat shot off and putting on a new hat, instead of getting directly shot over and over. This is at the moment my favorite game from this year.

 

MARK OF THE NINJA- which I am pretty sure i would enjoy more if it was called Mark the Ninja. I'm really conflicted about it. The UI is horrific, and the constant reminder of what buttons do makes me feel like they don't have any faith in my ability to recognize their environment. At the same time, when you use the mechanics to directly avoid and jump over and trick guards to get through a section, that part feels fucking amazing. The stealth kills are fetishized with a big zoom in and a large performance of suffering, which is really gross and kind of not the thing they're trying to portray ninjas as being. It's inefficient. I wish I didn't have to buy DLC to get the option to use someone who can just knock people out or whatever. Still. Fine.

 

ASSASSIN'S CREED UNITY- okay, i know. i have probably at some point shared what I think about assassin's creed as a series and a sign of the industry, namely as a sign of how we're letting game developers get away with bullshit which leads us into our current predicament of broken games hitting hte market with day one and then day two patches, plus the added bonus of stories designed to pimp sequels. That was Assassin's Creed 1's fault, and we didn't call Ubisoft's bluff on it, and now we're here.

 

ALL THAT SAID, I'm enjoying Unity a fair bit. I got it for $20 at Target and it's worth about that much money. All of my friends that have played the rest of the series hate it because of mechanical changes. I'm seeing them struggle angrily with shit I did perfectly first time through. I also switched the language track from English to French, because I hate the whole "History means English Accents" crap. As such, I don't want to murder the main character as much as my friends who have been playing it in English. I got to replace the sword with a mace as soon as I was able to buy a new weapon, and that's awesome. That's exactly what I'm looking for- non-lethal as an option right next to lethal, with it's own trade offs. It works great with the melee combat, it doesn't work so great with stealth actions. The assassinate button works on a hair trigger, but "knock out" feels like I have to submit an appeal to the district court of strangling, and sometimes they just don't approve. Assassin's creed is also REALLY GOOD at not fetishizing the stealth kills. There's no big elaborate "WOAAAHHH RADDDDD" kills. Everything is fast, and the camera angle doesn't change perspective to make sure they have the best shot of the blade entering or whatever.

 

i'm also still playing through the last of us because my best friend wants to see it so we trade off, and still fuck that game. we're at winter now. My favorite part of the game is if you crouch in front of a surface that has more than one item, you pump your fists into the sky and don't even come close to picking anything up. Every other part of how you play it is terrible, and the story isn't earning the dramatic moments it wants so bad.

[Shane]

I may be the very last person to come to the Geometry Wars franchise, but I was itching for a twin stick shooter and saw that it was $1.99 on Steam. Way more addictive than I would have guessed. Not great at it, but I improve almost every time I play.

[NikoBaltimore]

Speaking of Marvel games.... They released another on iOS called "Future Fight". It's pretty fun.

What I love about it is games like this and Conquest look gorgeous and are smooth as silk to play, yet don't require as much space on the phone like other big titles.  WWE Immortals takes up tons of space (1.7GB) and it can be slow to play.  They should see what Marvel's doing to accomplish this and use it to lessen the load for their game.  As it is I wonder why this game's worth keeping because while it's fun and it's WWE it just hogs up the phone space.

 

Future Fight is lots of fun, see myself going back and forth between that and Conquest.

[Big Fresh]

What is Conquest?

[NikoBaltimore]

Whoops, meant Contest of Champions.

 

Did I ever mention I'm not a morning person? 

[Big Fresh]

Ohhh, I thought I missed a Marvel game!

[Cliff Hanger]

Got the audio book version of CONSOLE WARS, just shy of halfway thru. I like it better than most of the people who bought it when it came out, likely because with a year's worth of hindsight I'm approaching it as "The Rise and Fall of Tom Kalinske, By Someone Who Spent A Lot Of Time With Tom Kalinske" rather than a definitive record of Sega and/or Nintendo in the early 90s. It does what it does very well, it just advertised itself as something else.

[Shane]

I'm just not really into narrative non-fiction, so that remains a stumbling block for me. I've quickly stalled both times I've picked it up. Maybe it'd work on audio, though.

[Brian Fowler]

So, anyone know why PT was deleted from the PS store?

And why they didn't give any warning soi could have downloaded it back onto my machine before that happened?

[Big Fresh]

Long story. The short version is: Konami is a shit-show right now, they're probably getting out of the videogame business right now, Silent Hills is cancelled, and pulling P.T. was done to spite Kojima.

[Brian Fowler]

That sucks. Really wished I'd known before it happened though so I could have kept the game that was on my "to play eventually" backlist.

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

beat the last of us

While I'm not going to say this ever approached good, when creativecontrol described it as a movie, that helped me understand what the designers were trying to do better. There's no agency in how the story progresses. Your role is as a machine that says "action." This would probably feel very dramatic if I didn't feel resentful over them trying to put some heavy message on selfishness when they themselves were being selfish about how you performed their story. You can watch all of the cutscenes and have the same experience, because all that is changing is if you are the projector or if someone else is.

Plus, I feel the story totally does not land. The way they skip -so much- in between seasons keeps story point they have from really landing for me. This is more of a problem with the Summer-Fall and Winter-Spring transitions, the latter one moreso. Joel turns into Wannabe Dad in the black screen, it doesn't exist before then. so all of the drama of his decision and "selfishness" or whatever is unwitnessed. The storyteller just goes "and then he's all, "honey kiddo lets pet the giraffes"" and I'm just supposed to come with them on that. It's not that easy.

 

and yeah, i knew joel was a bad guy. he strangled thousands. he also tortures, and then murders people he tortures. the idea that some dark turn is surprising is not... how ethics works.

[Big Fresh]

Nuh-uh

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

yeah-huh

[Big Fresh]

[Super Ape]

Long story. The short version is: Konami is a shit-show right now, they're probably getting out of the videogame business right now, Silent Hills is cancelled, and pulling P.T. was done to spite Kojima.

 

I'm fully expecting The Phantom Pain to get yanked for that same reason by August 31.

[AxB]

 

I'm playing Uncharted 2 right now, having just completed 1 (I already completed 3 first). So far 2 is a lot better than 1, because you can aim grenades without tilting your joypad all over the place. Too soon to say if it's better than 3 or not, but it seems a bit more coherent at least.

 

It's odd that we're also talking about the violence in Last of Us because the way the killing is handled in that game is kind of Naughty Dog's reaction to Nathan Drake's bizarre personality shift between the fun, affable 'Aw Shucks, I just try my best' guy he is in the cutscenes, and the ruthless executioner he is during gameplay. You'd think being a guy who'd killed over 300 people in the last couple of days would have an effect on someone's personality, but apparently not.

 

Hopefully Uncharted 4 would address that but Neil Druckmann has already said that he won't make the story 'grimdark.' So it really defeats the purpose/tone of the reveal trailer.

 

In my mind, Uncharted 4 would have to have Nathan Drake face having killed hundreds of (albeit shady) people and it finally weighs on his conscience.

I would have the game begin with him as a history graduate student attending an awards dinner with his wife Elena and he finds a note leading him to the hunt for the pirate's treasure. If he doesn't do this job, the people from Marlowe and Talbot's group will spill his real name to the police and he will be arrested for murdering Eddie Rajos, Lazarevic and Katherine Marlowe, not to mention the various men employed by them. Yes, they are criminals too, but he's no better.

 

But story-wise, Uncharted 2 is better although it does have a few unexplainable sections.  

 

 The irony there being the three people you named (in the spoiler box) as him killing are the only three people in the game world who he didn't actually kill (well the first one he basically did, he knocked a destroyed helicopter off a boat and a chain attached to it wrapped around the guys foot and dragged him under; the second one he failed to try and save him, when trying to save him would have just killed them both; the third he was actively trying to save their life, but they weren't strong enough to pull themselves out of the quicksand.

 

I played through three again (on Hard) because Achievement Hunter. It's very hard to get 30 kills with the Dragon Sniper when you only encounter one in the whole game, and it's right before one of those checkpoints that takes your weapons away. Often you've already had to kill almost everyone before you get near the corpse with the gun you want.

 

Will Uncharted 4 have them discover a long-hidden priceless historical artifact, only for them to then be forced to destroy it because it was originally hidden to save the world? Because that would be a massive departure for them.

[Andrew POE!]

 

 

 

Long story. The short version is: Konami is a shit-show right now, they're probably getting out of the videogame business right now, Silent Hills is cancelled, and pulling P.T. was done to spite Kojima.

 

I'm fully expecting The Phantom Pain to get yanked for that same reason by August 31.

 

 

I don't think it will but who knows.

 

I wouldn't put it past Konami to not even give review copies out of spite to every site (IGN, Giant Bomb, etc.). Judging by their past behavior and what they've done this year, I think MGS V will either have a low circulation run or won't be found in retailers during the first week.

 

Also, from what I understand about it, Konami's pulling P.T. demo actually got them in trouble with Sony based on what the fine print in the TOS say.

[FireThunder]

I love Starcraft but I've never bought the second game.  So, Mr Up-to-Date bought Starcraft 2 and the first expansion to help me christen my new rig.  It's more Starcraft, which sounds like damning with faint praise, but like I said, I really love this series, so...

 

Darkest Dungeon keeps treating me like a schoolyard bully, as well.  Every time I get a bit of swagger going, the RNG genie knocks the piss out of me.  "Oh, you think you've got this game figured out, eh?  CRIT, CRIT, CRIT on your healer... and a deathblow for good measure.  Have fun replacing her, asshole!"  /weeps bitter tears

[Cliff Hanger]

You know what? Outside the arcade multiplayer environment, the original Double Dragon series is not much fun at all. As much as the NES games felt inferior when I was 12, looking back at both the arcade versions and the home versions of DD1-2, the latter hold up better.

 

I am super tempted to grab Wasteland 2 while it's $20 on the Humble store, but I have so many Western RPGs I got six hours into and didn't go back to that it feels like I'd be flushing money down the toilet.

[Tabe]

You know what? Outside the arcade multiplayer environment, the original Double Dragon series is not much fun at all. As much as the NES games felt inferior when I was 12, looking back at both the arcade versions and the home versions of DD1-2, the latter hold up better.

They were never good. Arcade, home, whatever. The series sucks.

[NikoBaltimore]

I'm a bit bummed about Silent Hills being cancelled, but am not surprised considering Konami's situation.  The idea of Guillermo Del Toro and Norman Reedus being in on it had me interested to see how it would have worked.  They technically did announce the removal of the demo, but it wasn't widespread.