2018 VIDEO GAME CATCH-ALL THREAD

[Cliff Hanger]

Big update for SF5 today.  Survival Mode is finally not utter stupid garbage; they added recovery items you can save for later, the ability to NOT fight the original 16 characters in the same order over and over, and continues (which cost FM because they needed another money sink).  The lootbox option is meh.  I've done 2 (both free tickets, 1 that everyone got and 1 from clearing Easy Survival with a high score) and got a bundle of Survival items once and Ken's control art from SSF2T once.  

 

Cody is weird and interesting and plays waaay different than he did in Alpha and 4.  He still has a couple of the same moves, but now that the cuffs are off, they've gone out of their way to make him play much more like Final Fight (he has his jump-in combos, a 4xLP spammable combo that can either end with an uppercut or a throw if you hold down for the final hit, a vertical spin kick that requires a health sacrifice as his V-skill and his V-triggers are the knife and pipe). His arcade paths include SF1, which isn't really that surprising since Abigail has one too, and of course Alpha, 4 and 5.  Playing thru his Arcade routes, doing his prologue story and Easy Survival was nostalgic fun but I don't know if I want to learn him well enough to get my ass kicked online when I know Nash and Abigail well enough to get my ass kicked with STYLE already.

[Raziel]

So, still playing through Arkham Knight with a break here and there, and I'm working on what I think is the last bomb. 

 

Now I see what y'all were talking about with hating Tank Battles.  I think I'm up to attempt 30.

[Tromatagon]

I think that was the last time a game made me say FUCK THIS SHIT I'M DONE

[Death From Above]

I went with the "small cost, cast a wide net" thing with the Steam summer sale.

- Morrowind on PC. I basically paid $9 to never need to get my XBOX out of storage ever again. Never played the game with the community patch, which is an exciting prospect.

- Beyond Good and Evil. Never played this back in the day. It was like $2, why not? I have been curious for a long time.

- Age of Mythology EX. This fucking thing never goes on sale but was 75% off in this sale so that made it worth grabbing for me.

- Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. Notorious troll/meme game. I actually enjoy it a lot so far and find it 100 times funnier than rage inducing.

- Teslagrad. Platformer/metroidvania, very well reviewed, was on sale for $1. Cannot get hurt for $1.

- The Fidelio Incident. I don't know anything about this other than it's a short walking simulator. Got it for $1. Can't get hurt. Impulse buy.

- Game Dev Tycoon. I was worried this would be super-casual but I went bankrupt my first three games so that concern is gone. My first company went broke because I signed a shitty publication deal and got too little royalties for my biggest hit. My second company went broke because I went all-in marketing a game that turned out to be a giant flop. My third company went broke because I never gave any of my staff vacation and they stopped working. The game is TOO REAL.

[Contentious C]

Never need to dig your Xbox out again, ahahahahahaha, you silly person. Like Morrowind is that fixed.

Actually, it is pretty good. I don't think I wrapped up Tribunal the last time I went through, but the remainder was largely stable. Ish. What passes for stable for that game. Nexus Mods can get it fairly close to straightened out. Too bad enchanting is still only doable by breaking the game via potions or soultrap glitch (not that that really matters, I think I chopped Dagoth Ur and his family to bits with Goldbrand and paid for training for every skill to max stats to 100, because, seriously, WTF else would you do, right). 

I should probably play BG&E myself; have had it forever.

[Death From Above]

Honestly beyond the patch the other big problem on XBOX is the load time when starting a new game/loading a save is genuinely 2 minutes, and if I do play it again, I never want that experience anymore. It's not even a game I am prioritizing playing right away, but it is one of my all-time favourites and if I do revisit it, clearly the PC experience is the place to be.

[Cliff Hanger]

11 hours ago, Raziel said:

So, still playing through Arkham Knight with a break here and there, and I'm working on what I think is the last bomb. 

 

Now I see what y'all were talking about with hating Tank Battles.  I think I'm up to attempt 30.

I really, really want to go back to that game and finish it.  Knowing the Big Spoiler just makes me want to see the second half more.  But I'd have to start over because it's been 2 1/2 years, and I'd probably have to play Easy because the part that defeated me was the one where you use a voice synthesizer to lure goons into takeout-ready spots.  Takeout sequences generally play against my strengths as a visually impaired person; this one just fucking beat me into submission.  That combination of re-treading things I did before with always feeling irrationally bad when I wuss out makes it really hard to commit to.

[Raziel]

Yeah, while the Predator sequences aren't as plentiful as previous games, ,they're way less forgiving, since the game adjusts to your tatics and forces you to use most of your skills in each sequence, and the boss fight that's one big sequence is really fucking hard.  The story is up to par with the Arkham Series, although I still have Arkham Origin's story as the best one.  Knight seems WAAAAAAAY more trial and error than the previous 3, although I'd have to do a grand replay to see if that's accurate.

[RIPPA]

Arkham Knight is definitely in my Top 2 of games I actively hated but finished anyway

Star Wars Force Unleashed II would be the other one

List subject to change as I remember more rage

[Contentious C]

2 hours ago, Raziel said:

Yeah, while the Predator sequences aren't as plentiful as previous games, ,they're way less forgiving, since the game adjusts to your tatics and forces you to use most of your skills in each sequence, and the boss fight that's one big sequence is really fucking hard.  

So should I take that to mean it's like doing campaign challenges? Because if so, oooh wee, I might actually enjoy it rather than popping a whole Pred room in 90 seconds every time.

[J.T.]

I picked up my copy of Battle Chasers yesterday for fifteen US dollars. 

[John E. Dynamite]

Looks like I'm eating tuna sandwiches for a week or two - just bought a copy of the super-coveted PS1 space shooter Einhänder. Not cheap.

Also, Culdcept for PS2! Perfect couch co-op, in the sense that whoever isn't playing can drink rosé on the futon and tell you when you play your spell cards wrong.

[Tromatagon]

Culdcept is great.  The new rule changes they did on the latest one for 3DS are fucking weird but I guess they work.

[Death From Above]

Holy shit, the new Slay the Spire update unlocked a Custom Mode where you can pick any character at any ascension with any of the modifiers they use on the daily runs that you choose. All you have to do to unlock it is have beaten a daily run once, which is generally easy mode on a lot of days. Soooooooooo many possibilities.

This is seriously the best early access money I ever spent. And that's saying something in the same year Dead Cells happened.

[Spritenaut 32]

So I was listening to a gaming podcast this morning (still trying to find one I like) and the started talking about Street Fighter V.  Basically, the conversation was about how some fighting stick controller wouldn't be released for a few months, and how a lot of gameplay modes wouldn't be ready till a future update, and the online store wasn't live yet, and there wasn't much to do offline and if you didn't play online you'd be as well off to wait until  July, and one of the hosts was trying to explain to his friend that he shouldn't buy a PS4 because he doesn't have home internet and PS4 games are either broken or incomplete when they're released, and...... On and on and on.

And I'm sitting there thinking to myself "Are you shitting me?  Why do people put up with this?"   I just don't get how the companies managed to train consumers to put up with this.  I''m not sure what my motivation would be to put up with this.  I get that consoles are far more powerful than they were 10 or 15 years ago, and there are some incredible games out there, but are the catalogs really that much better than the PS2/Xbox/GameCube/Dreamcast generation?  'Cause I'm pretty happy with what those games have to offer.

Also. it's F***ing Street Fighter.  Not the most complex game ever developed.  Is it really that hard to put together a new Street Fighter game that's complete and non-buggy by launch day? 

There won't be consoles and physical copies of games much longer, will there?  Ugh.

[Ryan]

Street Fighter VI: The Patch: The Game, now with more patches.

[Tromatagon]

Fighting games are super complex.  Capcom is a shitty company.  

[SirSmUgly]

Random Yakuza update: I'm about to finish off the final cabaret club boss in that game, which is actually as fun as running the real estate business. Then, I'll wander back to the main story eventually after finishing up a couple of sub-stories. I have no idea how far I am into the game, but I don't want it to be over, so I bought Yakuza Kiwami last night. I don't expect it to be as full-featured as Yakuza 0 is since it's a re-release of the very first game, but it will keep me good for now. Then, I'll probably play Yakuza 6 and then cut back to playing Kiwami 2. Then, I'll play 5 at some point in the next year. 

I'm totally sold on this series. I would have played it earlier, but I didn't have a PS2 or PS3, so I didn't get the chance back when SEGA was first releasing Yakuza in North America.

I also finally got a copy of Watch.Dogs, a game that I actually pre-ordered prior to the PS4's launch on PS4, but then cancelled the pre-order when they pushed the release date back from the PS4's launch. I then proceeded never to play it or Watch.Dogs 2. I'm stashing it away for a time when I feel like I have nothing to play and need a game to fill the gap (which is like, never, since something is always coming out for PS4 or Switch, but I'll fit it in eventually). 

Finally: The Donkey Kong Adventure DLC for Mario and Rabbids is really, really good. That game is legitimately my favorite SRPG. It has all of the fun of XCOM without the frustration of missing point-blank shots because of RNG!

[Spritenaut 32]

6 hours ago, Ryan said:

Street Fighter VI: The Patch: The Game, now with more patches.

If there's ever a sequel to Segagaga (that's not happening), I feel like one of the objectives should be for your character to play a launch day version of the company's new "big game" without encountering any game-breaking bugs.

[Death From Above]

This is the part where we're supposed to pretend 2018 hasn't been good for AAA titles right?

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

7 hours ago, Player One said:

So I was listening to a gaming podcast this morning (still trying to find one I like) and the started talking about Street Fighter V.  Basically, the conversation was about how some fighting stick controller wouldn't be released for a few months, and how a lot of gameplay modes wouldn't be ready till a future update, and the online store wasn't live yet, and there wasn't much to do offline and if you didn't play online you'd be as well off to wait until  July, and one of the hosts was trying to explain to his friend that he shouldn't buy a PS4 because he doesn't have home internet and PS4 games are either broken or incomplete when they're released, and...... On and on and on.

worth noting that this is a description of how the game launched and not how it currently is, but yeah, SF5 had a brutal goddamn launch that seems spurred by a shortened schedule influenced by both Capcom and Sony's need for it to be a hit and to be a hit soon after release. It wasn't. Thank god MHW overperformed, otherwise Capcom would've been well and truly fucked.

also, I'm not defending it- I've burned out on it this year and have been desperate for a new fighting game. Just trying to clarify.

[Raziel]

2 hours ago, Death From Above said:

This is the part where we're supposed to pretend 2018 hasn't been good for AAA titles right?

Because it's easier to go with the rose colored narrative that AAA games are broke at launch.  Never mind that a cursoury glance at 2017's list leaves me hard pressed to name something that was completly broken at launch (Battlefront II isn't broke, it's just a shit game).  

 

We're also forgetting just how fucking bugged our favorite games were growing up that didn't have benefit of patching.  I mean, there are sections of Speed Runs dedicated to exploiting those bugs.  (Like beating SMB3 from world 7-1) 

[Death From Above]

3 hours ago, Raziel said:

Because it's easier to go with the rose colored narrative that AAA games are broke at launch.  Never mind that a cursoury glance at 2017's list leaves me hard pressed to name something that was completly broken at launch (Battlefront II isn't broke, it's just a shit game).  

 

We're also forgetting just how fucking bugged our favorite games were growing up that didn't have benefit of patching.  I mean, there are sections of Speed Runs dedicated to exploiting those bugs.  (Like beating SMB3 from world 7-1) 

Have you ever seen this?

It's shocking how broken this game, apparently, is. I never found ANY of this shit.

[John E. Dynamite]

I don't know if reverse-engineering 16-bit game code / a community practicing pixel-perfect manipulation of said code for years and years is the same thing as a Rockstar launching a trillion-dollar game with whatever hundred bugs the next RDR will have. Though I'm sure they'll be funny, clickbait-able bugs.

[Death From Above]

Sure but this is also the same year we had God of War, a 5-year AAA development that was undeniably a tens of millions of dollars project, launch about as close to clean as possible.

NES Metal Gear launched with a puzzle requiring you to find a radio code that nobody in the game gives you. The Wrestlemania game on XBOX shipped with an online multiplayer feature that literally couldn't connect due to a coding fuck up. This shit isn't new.

Cherry picking shit at either end is pretty easy, to be honest.