2018 VIDEO GAME CATCH-ALL THREAD

[Death From Above]

EA have a bunch of have-not franchises that I don't even know what the appeal is of anymore. Their NHL games are absolute bunk and somehow still don't have proper management features nearly 20 years into those being a thing. FIFA and Madden seem to get all the resources, and even then, it's not like Madden is actually universally loved, you hear a lot of complaints about it not being as feature rich as it should be. FIFA might be their only actual good sports franchise, despite all the sales.

Battlefield V seems... okay? It feels better to watch than the previous one just because they adjusted the pacing a bit so it's not such a clusterfuck. But man, all historical shooters just blur together to me, just not my thing.

[Jiji]

I adore the war shooters going back to Medal of Honor on PSX and I'm having fun with BFV but not nearly as much as the older classics or even BF1. Like they made the operations mode less fun than it was in BF1 somehow. 

[twiztor]

re: Smash Ultimate

i *think* i've gotten everyone that i want unlocked (i'm purposely losing against Wii Fit trainer/Pokemon/various others. coincidentally, Meta Knight also gave me fits). approx 16 hours into the Spirit Adventure mode. this one player mode is insane for a multiplayer fighting game. still loving it. so much variety in challenges and opponents. 
single player "classic mode" is fun too. short and sweet. when i've only got 10 minutes or so it's easy to knock out with another character. there is so much content in this game my mind is blown.

[NikoBaltimore]

8 hours ago, twiztor said:

re: Smash Ultimate

i *think* i've gotten everyone that i want unlocked (i'm purposely losing against Wii Fit trainer/Pokemon/various others. coincidentally, Meta Knight also gave me fits). approx 16 hours into the Spirit Adventure mode. this one player mode is insane for a multiplayer fighting game. still loving it. so much variety in challenges and opponents. 
single player "classic mode" is fun too. short and sweet. when i've only got 10 minutes or so it's easy to knock out with another character. there is so much content in this game my mind is blown.

I thought I put a nice dent in Adventure Mode considering how long I was going at it.  Then I saw the whole board and realized how little I've actually done.  It's a lot to go through and I love that.  I got Meta Knight but some of the challenges are just maddening.  I'm hoping to get them at some point though considering how much there is to do in the game I'm not in a huge rush to get everything done.

[Spritenaut 32]

Anyone play the Saturn All-Japan Pro Wrestling game (w/ Virtua.  Lol, why?)

Thinking of picking it up, but don't know much about it.  Assume it's kind of "arcade-y" (as most 32-bit wrestling games were), but looks like it could be fun.  Good roster and graphics look fine for the time.

[Tabe]

5 hours ago, Player One said:

Anyone play the Saturn All-Japan Pro Wrestling game (w/ Virtua.  Lol, why?)

Thinking of picking it up, but don't know much about it.  Assume it's kind of "arcade-y" (as most 32-bit wrestling games were), but looks like it could be fun.  Good roster and graphics look fine for the time.

I played it and enjoyed it.  Good game that looked good and played well.

It's called "with Virtua" because it features a character from Virtua Fighter 2, who was also a real-life wrestler for All Japan.

[Craig H]

On 12/16/2018 at 10:03 PM, Death From Above said:

EA have a bunch of have-not franchises that I don't even know what the appeal is of anymore. Their NHL games are absolute bunk and somehow still don't have proper management features nearly 20 years into those being a thing. FIFA and Madden seem to get all the resources, and even then, it's not like Madden is actually universally loved, you hear a lot of complaints about it not being as feature rich as it should be. FIFA might be their only actual good sports franchise, despite all the sales.

Battlefield V seems... okay? It feels better to watch than the previous one just because they adjusted the pacing a bit so it's not such a clusterfuck. But man, all historical shooters just blur together to me, just not my thing.

It's inconceivable to me that MLB: The Show perfected management/franchise mode years ago and pretty much nailed all the intricacies of how fucked up the MLB rulebook is when it comes to trades and free agency, and yet every other sports game out there can't get their shit together.

Also, these last few posts reminded me that I stupidly bought Battlefront 2. Maybe I should re-install it and give it another shot.

[Contentious C]

16 minutes ago, Tabe said:

I played it and enjoyed it.  Good game that looked good and played well.

It's called "with Virtua" because it features a character from Virtua Fighter 2, who was also a real-life wrestler for All Japan.

Oddly enough, Wolf Hawkfield was trained by the general manager of the Arizona Cardi--- uhhh, I mean...you know what I mean.  That other thread, yeah.

[Raziel]

1 minute ago, Craig H said:

 

Also, these last few posts reminded me that I stupidly bought Battlefront 2. Maybe I should re-install it and give it another shot.

It's alot better than it was at launch, but stay the hell out of Galactic Assault mode until you grind up in Blast, because GA players will make your life miserable until you get the cards to get competitive.

[Red King]

12 hours ago, Player One said:

Anyone play the Saturn All-Japan Pro Wrestling game (w/ Virtua.  Lol, why?)

Thinking of picking it up, but don't know much about it.  Assume it's kind of "arcade-y" (as most 32-bit wrestling games were), but looks like it could be fun.  Good roster and graphics look fine for the time.

It's the precursor to the giant gram games for the dreamcast.

[assfax]

You've got to go into that one with the mindset of 1997 Sega 3D arcade fighting game.  It's on a 2d plane and yer not going to just start whipping out special moves by running through fireball motions.  It's a lot of button combos and single direction input.

[AxB]

13 hours ago, Tabe said:

I played it and enjoyed it.  Good game that looked good and played well.

It's called "with Virtua" because it features a character from Virtua Fighter 2, who was also a real-life wrestler for All Japan.

It features two characters from Virtua Fighter, Jeffrey and Wolf Hawkfield. Then AJPW gave the Wolf Hawkfield gimmick to Jungle Jim Steele, even though in Virtua Fighter Wolf was a small Heavyweight* who did Huracanranas and Dragon Suplexes. The only moves Wolf did that Jim Steele could do were the spinning armbar and the Giant Swing.

* The game said Wolf was 6'2" and 220 lbs. Jim Steele is 6'3" and 264 lbs.

[S.K.o.S.]

Some highly amusing tweets in here about development hijinks in games.

 

[Contentious C]

The best is Howard Warshaw winning the thread by reminding everyone of E.T.

[Tabe]

10 hours ago, AxB said:

It features two characters from Virtua Fighter, Jeffrey and Wolf Hawkfield. Then AJPW gave the Wolf Hawkfield gimmick to Jungle Jim Steele, even though in Virtua Fighter Wolf was a small Heavyweight* who did Huracanranas and Dragon Suplexes. The only moves Wolf did that Jim Steele could do were the spinning armbar and the Giant Swing.

* The game said Wolf was 6'2" and 220 lbs. Jim Steele is 6'3" and 264 lbs.

Yeah, that's I said.

 

[Spritenaut 32]

I bought it.  

Next on my list to get is the PS1 AJW joshi game.  Really want that one.   May have to break down and import it from Japan.  I usually try to deal with actual import shops, or eBay sellers who are shipping from the US for my imports, out of a vague fear that a CD-based game shipped overseas won't be packed well by the eBay seller and be a complete mess when it arrive in my mail box.

[odessasteps]

1 hour ago, Player One said:

I bought it.  

Next on my list to get is the PS1 AJW joshi game.  Really want that one.   May have to break down and import it from Japan.  I usually try to deal with actual import shops, or eBay sellers who are shipping from the US for my imports, out of a vague fear that a CD-based game shipped overseas won't be packed well by the eBay seller and be a complete mess when it arrive in my mail box.

I might still have that somewhere. 

[Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie]

2 hours ago, Player One said:

I bought it.  

Next on my list to get is the PS1 AJW joshi game.  Really want that one.   May have to break down and import it from Japan.  I usually try to deal with actual import shops, or eBay sellers who are shipping from the US for my imports, out of a vague fear that a CD-based game shipped overseas won't be packed well by the eBay seller and be a complete mess when it arrive in my mail box.

It's been forever since I played that one, but I remember enjoying it when I owned it. I'd recommend reading a FAQ before playing it because the controls took some time to get used to.

[Cliff Hanger]

Per the Street Fighter twitter, there are no plans to offer a Season Pass for future characters. Buy them individually or not at all.  As someone who doesn't play enough online to be able to buy them with Fight Money, I am pretty unhappy with this choice.

[Death From Above]

I don't understand why people put up with Street Fighter's shit beyond the nostalgia value when some other actually still good fighting games are getting made.

[Spritenaut 32]

19 hours ago, Death From Above said:

I don't understand why people put up with Street Fighter's shit beyond the nostalgia value when some other actually still good fighting games are getting made.

Lol, that's basically my opinion of modern gaming as a whole.  "Why the F*** would I put up with that when there's a few hundred PS1 and Saturn games I want to play?"

[Death From Above]

Yeah well if you think there are no good games being made anymore I really can't help you, but as long as you're having fun. As someone that has lived through basically every generation of gaming save pre-Atari, I can't really imagine what people find so great about the N64/PS1 era at this point, but clearly it has an audience.

[BurningBeard]

I decided to buy Detroit Being Human instead of God of War last week. An hour into Detroit I can't help but feel like I made a terrible mistake

[odessasteps]

I booted up my Switch for the first time in months and kicked myself for forgetting their were redoing Katamari. 

[Spritenaut 32]

15 hours ago, Death From Above said:

Yeah well if you think there are no good games being made anymore I really can't help you, but as long as you're having fun. As someone that has lived through basically every generation of gaming save pre-Atari, I can't really imagine what people find so great about the N64/PS1 era at this point, but clearly it has an audience.

Yeah, no, there are plenty of good games being made these days.  There may be more good games being made these days than were made back in the 90's.  Certainly, games today will probably hold up better graphically.  It's more that there were plenty of good games made in the mid-90's or before, and I don't have to deal with a bunch of issues that will sap my enthusiasm.  

Somewhere in the past 15 years, the industry shifted and I find some of the shifts off-putting.  I don't really want to have to subscribe to an online service in order to be able to use my console fully.  I don't like the idea that development cycles are so short that publishers release badly busted games with the idea that they can fix bugs, add modes, improve the game, etc. as the months go by.  Hand in hand with that, I don't really want to fool with multiple gigantic patches for games.

I really hate how prevalent paying for additional content has  become.  I'm an accountant and generally pro-business, but I feel like the current status quo of the industry is to nickel-and-dime gamers for content that often should have been in the game to begin with.

Beyond that, there's the matter of personal preference.  I'm a collector and a physical media guy so I really am not much interested in digital games and online play is a secondary concern for me.  I also think, once released, content should be available to future players so I really don't want to hear that a useful update is no longer available for my Xbox game because the game is 15 years old and Microsoft took the server offline and stopped supporting the game a decade ago.  PS2 generation had it right.  Let people host content privately in the from of downloadable files.

I find the graphics in most games.... sterile? Charmless, maybe?  Sure, PS4 looks great, but I'll choose an attractive 2D game with hand-drawn sprites over most life-like PS4 games.  Nothing wrong with either.  Just personal preference.

Anyway, a lot of the stuff about the current business model in gaming strikes me as tedious, not enjoyable.   I look at Street Fighter V and think " sure, I'd like to play that.  But would I enjoy it that much more than Street Fighter Alpha 3 on the Saturn?  Darkstalkers 3?  Street Fighter III: Third Strike on Dreamcast or PS2?"  Probably not.

I feel like it's mostly PR that games have gotten that much better in the past 20 years.  Sure, better graphics and advances in processing power have opened up some genres, but are fighting games that much better than they were in the mid-90's or mid-2000's?  Platformers?  Puzzle games?  Shmups?  For that matter, is PS4 God of War that much better an adventure than Ocarina of Time?  It looks nice, but I dunno that core gameplay has evolved that much.

In the end, it's just personal preference.  Whatever you consider fun, man.  But there are an awful lot of Saturn/PS1/N64 games I'm itching to play.  I want to play Breath of the Wild and PS4 God of War too, but nowhere near as badly.