2018 VIDEO GAME CATCH-ALL THREAD

[Contentious C]

Because I am a dumb shit who is perpetually late to everything, I decided to play something new on my computer, rather than pumping more hours into a Bethesda or Batman game.

So I finally popped the top on Dead Space. I think if I'd known at the time that this was basically RE4 in space, I would have laughed long and hard and then ignored it every time it was on sale. And this does some of the same annoying shit that RE4 does - namely, the fact that a good chunk of the tension in the game comes from the shitty camera angle and the dipped-in-molasses controls. I'm also not a fan of how predictable the enemies are. "Oh hey look, there's an unbroken window (hey why is there a glass window that looks out onto nothing whatsoever except a wall in the middle of a fucking spaceship), I guess something is going to jump out at me after I finish looting the storage closet." Not that I'm not scared by every bump and scraping noise that seems like it's coming from behind me, to the point that I turn on an extra light before firing up a save game...but still, you kinda know where they're coming.

That said, there are just enough vaguely System Shock-ish bits to make me continue forward with it, and the sound editing is amazeballs. It also made me think of what a better game might look like. It'd be kind of different to have a game (and maybe this qualifies to an extent) where there are no enemy respawns. If the dead ship had 700 crew, you shouldn't run into more than 700 zombies, etc. And then just follow that up with harsher resource management. Although as I reflect upon the gameplay of something like Tomb Raider or Halo, for example, I suppose technically most shooter/action games meet that criterion, but they don't necessarily feel that way. Those aren't ammo hoses in the way the Borderlands games are, but they're way more bullet-hosey than this is.

From the tiny bit I've read, the second game in the series is shinier but not as good, and the third one is divisive as all Hell (of course I bought them all before playing any of them; what kind of obsessive jerk do you think I am?). But what I really want to know is, do the controls get any less irritating if you're using a 360 controller? Not that I'm going to skip around, but a rough estimate of how much aggravation I have in store would be handy.

I guess a couple months from now I'll regale you all with a hot take on, oh, I don't know, GTA: Vice City. I know you're just itching to hear what I think of that. Or maybe I'll just be sensible and finish Shadow of Mordor, since I'm at least accustomed to how it plays.

[Raziel]

Yes, the Dead Space series plays better with a controller.  I don't recall if 1 had controller support on the PC, but there's a 99% chance there's a mod somewhere that adds support (It's an EA game, chances are the PC version is just a port of the console with the controller support turned off and mouse/keys support added that can be swapped out, like the Mass Effect series).  But yeah, I think I'm the only one on here that played 3 and liked it, and even then the weapon crafting system puts the game on easy mode pretty quick.

[Contentious C]

I suppose I should have clarified, "Do the sequels have better controller support than the first one?" Thus my remark about skipping around - a part of me would want to play the sequels instead if the camera and aim sensitivity were better, but I think I'm going to trudge through the rest of this for now. I got to that stupid asteroid section and...uhhhghgh. I was going to just say fuck it and give up, but somehow I finished it with 1% hull integrity remaining. Allegedly that's the one section that's easier with a mouse. 

Well, jammed through that and all of Dead Space 2. 

Yep, the controls are a lot better in the second one. 

Nope, I will NEVER play that shit again; like I wasn't already a needle-phobe. Gaaaaaaaaahhhhh.

[Death From Above]

For Slay the Spire players: someone has put up a website with all kinds of data tracking info.

http://spirelogs.com

[Andrew POE!]

On 5/17/2018 at 11:50 PM, Contentious C said:

I suppose I should have clarified, "Do the sequels have better controller support than the first one?" Thus my remark about skipping around - a part of me would want to play the sequels instead if the camera and aim sensitivity were better, but I think I'm going to trudge through the rest of this for now. I got to that stupid asteroid section and...uhhhghgh. I was going to just say fuck it and give up, but somehow I finished it with 1% hull integrity remaining. Allegedly that's the one section that's easier with a mouse. 

Well, jammed through that and all of Dead Space 2. 

Yep, the controls are a lot better in the second one. 

Nope, I will NEVER play that shit again; like I wasn't already a needle-phobe. Gaaaaaaaaahhhhh.

Go for the Platinum then get the German version and go for it again!

Wait, needles...yeah, forget it.

 

[Zimbra]

29 minutes ago, Death From Above said:

For Slay the Spire players: someone has put up a website with all kinds of data tracking info.

http://spirelogs.com

My wife and I are hooked on Slay the Spire.  I throw it up on the tv with the steam link so she can kibbutz while I drive.  Such a great, addictive game.

Also played a bit of Project Highrise, which is a fun, light successor to SimTower.  You can get the game and all the DLC for under $10 on Steam this weekend.

[Death From Above]

I am absolutely trash with the Ironclad. Hopeless. But I'm actually pretty good with the Silent and working on the ascension levels, when the mood strikes. I haven't tried the third guy that is on the beta branch yet, I'll just wait for his official release. And yeah, Slay the Spire is real fucking good. It's one of those rare early access titles where if they for some reason abandoned the game right now (and clearly with the success they are having that isn't going to happen) I'd be 100% fine with the finished product we have.

It's funny because roughly 15-20 hours in I hit kind of a wall and thought maybe I'd seen all the game had to offer, but then I got through the "knowledge barrier" where you start to see and understand more card combinations, and now I am about 80 hours in and I realize I know nothing. The turn based nature means it's also a phenomenal game for multi-tasking when watching sports on TV or some stream on twitch or a show on youtube or whatever. 

[Spritenaut 32]

I spent the money I was thinking about spending on a PS3 (or Xbox 360) on the ridiculously expensive, fairly rare controller for Steel Battalion.  For those who don't remember (it was 15 years ago), SB is a realistic mech combat game that came packaged with it's own controller.  Controller consisted of two control sticks, a throttle, a set of footpads, and about 40 buttons.  Unsurprisingly, it was never used with any other game.

I'm pretty satisfied with how this turned out.  Every time i think about getting a more current game console, I remember there are several hundred games I want to play or collect on old consoles (SNES-Original Xbox, basically) and I'll probably never get around to playing Yoshi's Island or Skies of Arcadia if I buy a next gen system.

[Contentious C]

1 hour ago, Keep Calm, Akira Hokuto On said:

I spent the money I was thinking about spending on a PS3 (or Xbox 360) on the ridiculously expensive, fairly rare controller for Steel Battalion.  For those who don't remember (it was 15 years ago), SB is a realistic mech combat game that came packaged with it's own controller.  Controller consisted of two control sticks, a throttle, a set of footpads, and about 40 buttons.  Unsurprisingly, it was never used with any other game.

Except for the sequel!

I don't know what's crazier, that companies made games like that, or that a controller of that sort is almost rendered obsolete by crap you could do nowadays with touchscreens and voice commands.

Oh, right, the craziest bit is you have somewhere in your domicile to stash the thing. Holy crap. 

Me, I bought the PS3. I didn't expect just jetting around NYC as Iron Man in Lego Marvel Super Heroes would be so much fun, but man, it is. It's too bad Marvel hasn't done a proper stand-alone, open world game for any of its IPs besides Spidey. Iron Man could make a really, really good ARPG.

[Zimbra]

22 hours ago, Death From Above said:

I am absolutely trash with the Ironclad. Hopeless. But I'm actually pretty good with the Silent and working on the ascension levels, when the mood strikes. I haven't tried the third guy that is on the beta branch yet, I'll just wait for his official release. And yeah, Slay the Spire is real fucking good. It's one of those rare early access titles where if they for some reason abandoned the game right now (and clearly with the success they are having that isn't going to happen) I'd be 100% fine with the finished product we have.

It's funny because roughly 15-20 hours in I hit kind of a wall and thought maybe I'd seen all the game had to offer, but then I got through the "knowledge barrier" where you start to see and understand more card combinations, and now I am about 80 hours in and I realize I know nothing. The turn based nature means it's also a phenomenal game for multi-tasking when watching sports on TV or some stream on twitch or a show on youtube or whatever. 

I haven't even gotten to ascensions yet, so there's still a lot I haven't seen or understood.

Silent does seem objectively stronger than Ironclad.  The only luck I've had with Ironclad was with a really block-heavy build that used body slam for damage, but it didn't get me to the end of the spire and wasn't that much fun.  Poison Silent and shiv Silent are both awesome and tons of fun.

[Neil Koch]

1 hour ago, Contentious C said:

Except for the sequel!

I don't know what's crazier, that companies made games like that, or that a controller of that sort is almost rendered obsolete by crap you could do nowadays with touchscreens and voice commands.

Oh, right, the craziest bit is you have somewhere in your domicile to stash the thing. Holy crap. 

Me, I bought the PS3. I didn't expect just jetting around NYC as Iron Man in Lego Marvel Super Heroes would be so much fun, but man, it is. It's too bad Marvel hasn't done a proper stand-alone, open world game for any of its IPs besides Spidey. Iron Man could make a really, really good ARPG.

There was a good Hulk game for PS2/Xbox1.

[Zimbra]

Why haven't we gotten a Hulk: Ultimate Destruction remastered yet?  That game ruled.

[Contentious C]

Well, there were 3 different Hulk games for PS2, so I can only guess you mean Ultimate Destruction, which was the only one I recall getting good reviews at the time. But still nothing in the last 10 years, and every game that has been released alongside a movie release has looked shoddy.

[Spritenaut 32]

On ‎5‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 12:19 PM, Contentious C said:

Except for the sequel!

I don't know what's crazier, that companies made games like that, or that a controller of that sort is almost rendered obsolete by crap you could do nowadays with touchscreens and voice commands.

Oh, right, the craziest bit is you have somewhere in your domicile to stash the thing. Holy crap. 

Me, I bought the PS3. I didn't expect just jetting around NYC as Iron Man in Lego Marvel Super Heroes would be so much fun, but man, it is. It's too bad Marvel hasn't done a proper stand-alone, open world game for any of its IPs besides Spidey. Iron Man could make a really, really good ARPG.

Lol, except not even the sequel used the damn controller!  Sequel was on Xbox 360 and used the standard controller and the Kinect motion control sensor.  Apparently, the controller was blamed for Steel Battalion 1 being a commercial flop (with the controller, the game retailed for $200 - 15+ years ago.

I get the urge to play Breath of the Wild or buy God of War for PS4 and become a graphics whore, but the impulse doesn't usually last long.  I kinda feel like current gaming has moved away from my sweet spot both in terms of gameplay and in terms of how the games are commercialized.  I like grim and realistic as much as anyone - Shadow of the Colossus, RE4, and the first two God of War games are all on my summer play list - but I gravitate more towards wacky, colorful games.  Two of my favorite systems are the N64 and Dreamcast.  I don't think either catalog is really deep for my preferences (I don't like fighters or shooters, which were plentiful on both systems, esp. Dreamcast), but they had so many bright, colorful platformers I really enjoyed.  N64 had the obvious suspects, but also had underrated games like Mischief Makers which are an awful lot of fun.  Dreamcast had a number of odd, cartoony platformers (Nappa Tales, for example) and then some stuff that's just off-the-wall (Seaman, Lack of Love, Elemental Gimmick Gear, etc.). 

Segagaga may be the oddest RPG I ever played (you play a Sega game designer.  If the evil rival company isn't meant to be a Sony parody, then I have no idea what is going on.

As fatr as the marketplace, I'm kinda resistant to the way games are marketed and distributed.  I'm not a big fan of the release-before-its-done-patch-patch-patch routine that seems to be common.  Not a fan of having to tie a gaming console to my already over-stressed wireless network (5 people in the house, over a dozen cell phones, desktop pcs, laptops, ipads, etc.).  Nothing really wrong with it and I will probably do it eventually, but right now, it seems like more of a hassle than something I'll enjoy.  And I have no interest in services like the PS Network.  I'm a physical media guy.  I enjoy collecting actual things - books, running gear, games, whatever.  No interest in a virtual console or a Kindle or whatever.  Gaming has kinda left me behind in terms of both gaming interests and the economics of the marketplace.

Plus, I wasn't kidding when I said there was several hundred games from PS2 to OG Xbox that I want to play and/or collect. 

 

[Death From Above]

One of my all-time great disappointments was buying one of the two XBOX Hulk games for $5 at a garage sale then getting it home and realizing it was the crappy one. FAILURE

[Craig H]

I loved Dead Space 1 and 2. 3, not so much. 2 gave me one of my biggest scares ever though. The way my family room is setup is that it's at the back of the house and there's a row of windows that let you look out at the backyard. It's also night out. There's a part in Dead Space 2 where you get to another derelict ship and you walk along for a long time without anything happening. The longer I walk the more I feel like shit is going to hit the fan so I really slow down because the tension has built a ton. I way into the game at this point.

Suddenly my motion sensor light outside flips on as my dog walks by the windows. Freaked me the hell out. Jumped and dropped my controller and everything. Made the jump scare at that part of the game easier to handle though.

[SirSmUgly]

Runner3 is out!

It's no Runner2, but Runner2 is like a top-twenty-five game all-time, so what is? 

Charles Martinet continues to do the best VO work of his video game career, btw. 

[Contentious C]

1 hour ago, Craig H said:

I loved Dead Space 1 and 2. 3, not so much. 2 gave me one of my biggest scares ever though. The way my family room is setup is that it's at the back of the house and there's a row of windows that let you look out at the backyard. It's also night out. There's a part in Dead Space 2 where you get to another derelict ship and you walk along for a long time without anything happening. The longer I walk the more I feel like shit is going to hit the fan so I really slow down because the tension has built a ton. I way into the game at this point.

Suddenly my motion sensor light outside flips on as my dog walks by the windows. Freaked me the hell out. Jumped and dropped my controller and everything. Made the jump scare at that part of the game easier to handle though.

That's pretty awesome.

The point in the game where you go back to the Ishimura was, for me, the moment when I realized that the first 2 games in the series don't have a single narrative beat of their own. The "betrayals" are telegraphed and the progression through each game is a rehash (deliberate or not) of Halo and Halo 2.

I think I'm just going to be done with shooters, and especially zombie shooters, for a while. Not that either game was a bad game - they weren't - but they go on the list of things I found disappointing. I tried the new Wolfenstein game from a few years back, but it lost me in the first 20 minutes with all the hoop-jumping and ridiculousness of its overblown excuse for a tutorial. Deus Ex: Human Revolution was too cut-scene-tastic to get me hooked, too. The Thief remake was actively bad. I've enjoyed the little bit of Rise of the Tomb Raider I've played so far, but it's clear to me the reason I'm enjoying it is because it's just more of the game before it. I can't quite tell if games have just run out of ideas, or if I've run out of the ability to give a shit about them.

[Zimbra]

2 hours ago, Death From Above said:

One of my all-time great disappointments was buying one of the two XBOX Hulk games for $5 at a garage sale then getting it home and realizing it was the crappy one. FAILURE

I did this, but with SNES wrestling games.

[Death From Above]

I am a giant Alien fanboy so I was well overdue to try Alien Isolation and I have to say... I pretty much fucking hate it. It's SO CLUNKY AND SLOW. Everything feels like you're The Weakest Person, even with other persons. The crafting system arbitrarily limits you in really weird ways. All the maps have that "we are pretending you could go anywhere but there is a Clear Right and Wrong Path" thing going on. Also through the first 4 and a half hours I played, the Alien was on screen for maaaaybe 60 seconds, and half of that is cutscenes. He hasn't killed me once and I've never interacted with it. I should not have to play a game called ALIEN: ISOLATION for more than 4 and a half hours to have an actual interaction with the Alien. So much of the story is revealed through Conveniently Available Personal Logs Laying Around. The environments are just swimming with asset-re-use overload and are full of shit it seems you could interact with but can't. Every other human tries to murder you on sight for No Clear Reason. It feels like a game that was designed for 3rd person field of vision then they changed to first person halfway into development but didn't actually adjust any of the gameplay to go with that. About the only thing it does really well is use the soundtrack to build tension effectively. I'm honestly not sure it does anything else to a passable level.

Boring and frustrating as shit. I tapped out on the fourth mission where you are playing tag with a bunch of murder-androids. I genuinely don't understand the love for this thing at all. I want to be hunted by the Alien in a really good video game but this isn't it.

[Death From Above]

Also in my "I get around to shit everyone else did years ago" series, Mortal Kombat 9 is, like, shockingly good except for two things:

- Story mode handicap matches can rot in hell

- Shao Khan: all the bullshit you remember from Mortal Kombat 3, but more energy.

Still, this is what MK should have always been. The lack of ridiculously janky bullshit compared to the "classics" is unbelievably welcome.

[Contentious C]

Thanks for saving me $10 on the Alien game. Mulled it over during the winter sale, glad I didn't pull the trigger. 

[SirSmUgly]

Runner3 is an interesting mix of ideas; the levels are longer, the perspective is changed so that your ability to react is tighter, and the bonus levels play like a mix of Celeste and Super Meat Boy. One downer is the sound editing. There are times when I hit a gold brick, and it didn't add to the music. I count twice that this happened in the first few levels of the first world. 

It's not as immediately likable as Runner 2, which was immediate in clicking with me when I played it, but the core gameplay is the same. I do note that you can run quests collecting pickups in different levels for characters that you come across when taking specific paths through a level. That's sort of interesting. There are vehicles, but the controls are herky-jerky and a bit loose. I'm pretty sure this game is worse than Runner 2 by a fairly significant amount, but I'll need another few hours to figure out if I ultimately stick with it and like it, stick with it and kinda hate it, or drop it altogether. 

[Neil Koch]

13 hours ago, Death From Above said:

I am a giant Alien fanboy so I was well overdue to try Alien Isolation and I have to say... I pretty much fucking hate it. It's SO CLUNKY AND SLOW. Everything feels like you're The Weakest Person, even with other persons. The crafting system arbitrarily limits you in really weird ways. All the maps have that "we are pretending you could go anywhere but there is a Clear Right and Wrong Path" thing going on. Also through the first 4 and a half hours I played, the Alien was on screen for maaaaybe 60 seconds, and half of that is cutscenes. He hasn't killed me once and I've never interacted with it. I should not have to play a game called ALIEN: ISOLATION for more than 4 and a half hours to have an actual interaction with the Alien. So much of the story is revealed through Conveniently Available Personal Logs Laying Around. The environments are just swimming with asset-re-use overload and are full of shit it seems you could interact with but can't. Every other human tries to murder you on sight for No Clear Reason. It feels like a game that was designed for 3rd person field of vision then they changed to first person halfway into development but didn't actually adjust any of the gameplay to go with that. About the only thing it does really well is use the soundtrack to build tension effectively. I'm honestly not sure it does anything else to a passable level.

Boring and frustrating as shit. I tapped out on the fourth mission where you are playing tag with a bunch of murder-androids. I genuinely don't understand the love for this thing at all. I want to be hunted by the Alien in a really good video game but this isn't it.

You may still want to check out the DLCs based on the first movie, Crew Expendable and Last Survivor.  I found that the main game was too stretched out as well, but I really enjoyed the DLC.  It puts you right into getting chased by the Alien and having all the equipment.  (It also has some of the original actors doing the voices.) There's also survival mode, which is basically just you and the Alien on a map, but I can't remember if you have to beat the game or not to unlock it.

[RIPPA]

Well now that Sony has announced that the PS4 is in the end of its life-cycle - it would be really swell if the price would drop so I could finally get one.

(It will probably be 5 years from now I will still not have played Horizon:Zero Dawn or its inevitable sequel)