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Post by jmakin on Dec 8, 2022 5:43:14 GMT
I just finished god of war: ragnarok.
Let me just preface this by saying, it’s definitely a good game, maybe even pretty good - however, it did not live up to hype and fell way short of the first game. However, to be fair, the first game was the best ever made.
Story - by far the worst part of this game. I won’t spoil but almost nothing any character does at any point of this story seems to make much sense, not to mention the story itself. the first game had a coherent narrative - this one’s all over the place and likely riddled with plot holes if you think about it too hard. anyway, it’s about prophecy, or destiny, or something, until wait no, it’s not, then it is, or something - who knows. I read that some devs were upset because they wanted it to be two games. I was like “wow cool the game’s so large it should be two games!” Well, no - it’s like they tried to rush 2 games worth of story into a single game. most play throughs of this game will have nearly 25% of the run be cutscenes. that’s fuckin nuts.
gameplay - arguably where this game shines the most from its predecessor. blades of chaos massively improved, axe felt nerfed slightly. This was refreshing because I only very rarely used blades in the first game and felt in this game I favored blades a lot but was switching frequently between all weapons. you get a spear about 1/2 of the way through the game that’s pretty cool but by the time it seems to become decent the game’s over with. The combat was great, but the enemy variety seemed very lacking. much of the game you’re fighting like 2 variations of the same einhenjar (sp?).
rpg elements - crafting system sucks somehow worse in this game. there are a million mats and often no clue what they go to, sometimes like only a single item. there are definitely fewer possible viable builds in this game. maybe some will find this an improvement but I did not.
graphics/art/music/acting - superb, I’m not sure we could expect more. particularly good performance from odin.
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Post by jmakin on Dec 8, 2022 6:22:10 GMT
oh, the puzzles were legit awful. some interesting ones but for the most part extremely obvious. the last game’s puzzle would legit stump me for very long amounts of time. I didn’t even really struggle with any nornir chests, even. just a clear lack of effort there.
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Post by kerowo on Dec 8, 2022 12:08:14 GMT
Dwarf Fortress has finally got a human readable interface and went live on Steam this week. It is probably still one of the most complicated video games of all times with around 20 years of development work on it. It inspired Minecraft, Rimworld, and many other colony creation games. Less than a year into my first game my fortress is in the process of being destroyed by Goblins. Highly recommended.
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Post by jmakin on Dec 8, 2022 15:12:08 GMT
I wish I had the attention span for those kinds of games. Even kerbal space program is a bit much for me, I dive into rabbitholes and spend way too much time on something that doesn’t help me at all.
Recently tried to play crusader kings III and it’s definitely fun but way way way too much for me
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Post by jman220 on Dec 8, 2022 21:28:37 GMT
I don’t have much time for video games with young kids these days, but now my oldest daughter is just getting to the age where she can play video games, which is fun. Completely different genre, but we recently downloaded Beam NG Drive (which is a heavily customizable real-physics driving simulator), and we’ve had a blast with it.
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Post by goofyballer on Dec 9, 2022 18:23:32 GMT
My wife asked me the other night what the first game I would want our future kids to play is, and I was legit stumped, that's a tough question. Do you go with retro classic from your childhood, or something current? If kids are aware of how modern games look it feels tougher to sell them on Super Mario Brothers being worth their time.
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Post by Trolly on Dec 9, 2022 18:37:41 GMT
Midnight Suns is way more addictive than I expected.
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Post by boredsocial on Dec 10, 2022 23:13:56 GMT
My wife asked me the other night what the first game I would want our future kids to play is, and I was legit stumped, that's a tough question. Do you go with retro classic from your childhood, or something current? If kids are aware of how modern games look it feels tougher to sell them on Super Mario Brothers being worth their time. Smash seems like a good option. |
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Post by jmakin on Dec 10, 2022 23:51:44 GMT
My nephew is 5. He may be slightly on the spectrum but is showing signs of giftedness - he first started reading a little after 3 years old, and now I’d estimate his vocabulary and reading comprehension around 6th grade level at 5 years.
my sister initially was doing zero screens with him but she has a switch and we grew up on video games so she gave up and cant keep him away. his motor skills are kinda bad, even for a 5 year old, so when I visited him on thanksgiving the only game he could really play and enjoy was goat simulator (smash hit).
I told my sister though there’s tons of sciencey (all he wants to read about is science) educational style games out there he’d probably love when he gets a little older, like kerbal space program comes to mind.
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Post by jmakin on Dec 10, 2022 23:58:27 GMT
games like roblox and minecraft encourage creativity and imagination and are great games at introducing kids’ interest in programming, I plan in another few years when he’s ready to start seeing his interest there, provided programming isnt a completely dead profession by the time he’s old enough
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Post by Trolly on Dec 11, 2022 7:26:35 GMT
I don’t have much time for video games with young kids these days, but now my oldest daughter is just getting to the age where she can play video games, which is fun. Completely different genre, but we recently downloaded Beam NG Drive (which is a heavily customizable real-physics driving simulator), and we’ve had a blast with it. Oh god have you seen the YouTube series with Justin McElroy? Remind me about this, you all have to see it. |
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Post by jman220 on Dec 11, 2022 12:16:10 GMT
No, I’ll take a look.
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Post by jmakin on Dec 11, 2022 14:41:34 GMT
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Post by Trolly on Dec 11, 2022 15:45:19 GMT
I don’t have much time for video games with young kids these days, but now my oldest daughter is just getting to the age where she can play video games, which is fun. Completely different genre, but we recently downloaded Beam NG Drive (which is a heavily customizable real-physics driving simulator), and we’ve had a blast with it. Oh god have you seen the YouTube series with Justin McElroy? Remind me about this, you all have to see it. |
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Post by jman220 on Dec 11, 2022 16:21:29 GMT
My 7 yo daughter and I enjoy watching Neilogical on youtube. He does BeamNG videos and is entertaining.
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Post by boredsocial on Dec 12, 2022 19:58:28 GMT
I have basically been tunnel visioning rimworld when gaming for the last 45 days. Is dwarf fortress semi accessible yet? I can't do ASCII graphics.
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Post by jman220 on Dec 12, 2022 21:24:03 GMT
I have basically been tunnel visioning rimworld when gaming for the last 45 days. Is dwarf fortress semi accessible yet? I can't do ASCII graphics.   |
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Post by jmakin on Dec 13, 2022 1:14:35 GMT
I have basically been tunnel visioning rimworld when gaming for the last 45 days. Is dwarf fortress semi accessible yet? I can't do ASCII graphics. yes it is a full UI |
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Post by goofyballer on Dec 17, 2022 21:53:25 GMT
I'm playing The Last Of Us: Part 1 as I never played the original (this is the PS4/5 remaster), and it's decent but man it's sooooo scripted to the point that it's hard for me to understand how everyone loves it so much.
There's such a contradiction at the center of it: it's a stealth game, but it's also a scripted experience with jump scares and crap like that. So you get these really jarring sequences where you'll be using listen mode to highlight all the enemies around you, and see absolutely nothing, but then you cross the invisible line triggering the Jump Square sequence and 10 enemies show up out of nowhere.
It is then not always clear what the game wants you to do in these - in some such sequences you're supposed to just run for your life and look for an exit, while in other similar sequences you're supposed to kill all the enemies that appear. Making the wrong decision (at least, in the context of the game world; the real-world consequences are that you reload your last save) is very bad! If you spend a bunch of bullets shooting at enemies that actually spawn infinitely and you're supposed to be running from, those are extremely precious resources you're wasting.
I'm particularly annoyed right now in the sewers, where I'm at a sequence I'm studying academically that bizarrely violates all the rules the game has set up for you:
- this is the first time I've ever seen enemies disappear from listen mode if they're not making noise (throughout the game I've seen that even silent enemies standing still will show on listen mode, but here they fade in and out for some reason)
- it appears to be a kind of triggered ambush with no particular trigger - it's all clickers, who we're told operate based on hearing you but who won't hear you crouchwalk slowly, yet after advancing far enough into this area and literally just sitting still for a minute suddenly all the clickers in the area will converge on my exact location and attack without any comprehensible trigger or without me making a sound.
The general vibe is that it feels like there's a game designer in the room with you, who halfway through some of your encounters will look up from his phone and be like "oh, no, this isn't a normal encounter, this is a XYZ encounter", and if you can suspend disbelief to just roll with it then the game is still plenty fun. I find this kind of inconsistency really annoying though - great games teach you their rules and stick to them, or at least subvert them only because doing so is intentional and has a point, not cause the game designers are like "ah fuck it let's do this here".
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Post by goofyballer on Dec 17, 2022 22:06:14 GMT
I'm particularly annoyed right now in the sewers, where I'm at a sequence I'm studying academically that bizarrely violates all the rules the game has set up for you: - this is the first time I've ever seen enemies disappear from listen mode if they're not making noise (throughout the game I've seen that even silent enemies standing still will show on listen mode, but here they fade in and out for some reason) - it appears to be a kind of triggered ambush with no particular trigger - it's all clickers, who we're told operate based on hearing you but who won't hear you crouchwalk slowly, yet after advancing far enough into this area and literally just sitting still for a minute suddenly all the clickers in the area will converge on my exact location and attack without any comprehensible trigger or without me making a sound. Oh, it seems my confusion here is that some of these are stalkers, not clickers, which look substantially similar (particularly in the dark) but behave entirely differently, including in the above ways. I guess you also do not get the "something sees you!" sound when they're aware of your presence like you get with every other enemy in the game (which the game fails to tell you). |
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Post by goofyballer on Dec 18, 2022 0:19:47 GMT
Okay wait wait wait what is going on with the narrative structure here? The first several hours of the game revolve around the difficulty of things we take completely for granted, like finding a working car and getting all of 500 miles from Boston to Pittsburgh, where that "working car" plan goes up in smoke and we're stuck for quite awhile. Then the game's like "here's a quick black screen" and next thing you know we're in fucking Wyoming?!?!? What?  ?? |
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Post by goofyballer on Dec 19, 2022 7:34:44 GMT
Finished the game tonight. I think it got a lot better towards the end, starting with the winter sequence which was really excellent. It took awhile to hit its stride - so many of these games are just filled with busywork, with the boring minutiae of getting around the Sisyphean obstacles the designers line up for you for no other reason than filling up ten hours of play time. Like the middle really dragged in the parts where you're wandering around neighborhoods and OCD is driving you to explore every three-story house top to bottom because god forbid you miss any supplies you need to survive the next battle - stuff like that is so tedious and not serving any purpose other than filling time. But the last ~third of the game really narrowed everything down to its best parts and delivered.
Another really refreshing and slightly revolutionary thing about this game - not much in the way of boss fights at all, there's really only one obvious one and it's not at the end. The end is really satisfying through its story rather than trying to force an awkward, uncharacteristic Big Fight To End All Fights that undoubtedly would have been a letdown. Very cool!
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Post by jmakin on Dec 19, 2022 22:53:45 GMT
I didn't understand the point of that game. It seemed and looked tedious to me, and now you make it sound that way. Is it challenging? I like to think I'd enjoy it but it doesn't seem like I would.
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Post by goofyballer on Dec 20, 2022 1:18:32 GMT
I think it's skippable considering that the first 2/3 of the game was kinda meh, even if the last third was pretty good.
I played on hard and found it a little challenging, and there's two harder difficulties (plus permadeath options?) that can make it harder if you wanted that.
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Post by Trolly on Dec 20, 2022 21:56:40 GMT
In terms of storytelling, Last of Us was one of the best zombie things I've seen in the past 20+ years. Great characters. Ending completely bowled me over.
Thought the gameplay was great too, always felt like I had just barely enough ammo/tools to get past encounters. I'm pretty sure the scavenging system is rigged to always give you just enough gear.
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Post by jmakin on Dec 21, 2022 3:00:35 GMT
I think it's skippable considering that the first 2/3 of the game was kinda meh, even if the last third was pretty good. I played on hard and found it a little challenging, and there's two harder difficulties (plus permadeath options?) that can make it harder if you wanted that. ok yes i might like that, creates suspense |
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Post by jmakin on Dec 23, 2022 3:37:14 GMT
half life 2 still holds up.
funny story - it came out when I was 13 or so, I loved it, of course. Was one of the first modern shooter engines and modern counterstrike still pretty much uses the same engine IIRC. Anyway I get to the end and there's a huge cliffhanger - valve soon after becomes a game platform and not a developer, I read some article about how half life 3 would never be made, and resigned myself to never knowing the ending.
Well turns out they made 2 more games and I had no fucking clue because they were also named half life 2 instead of half life 3 and half life 4 like would make any fucking sense at all. I cant believe I didnt know there were more games. This is one of my favorite games of all time.
There are frustrating parts on hard mode where it feels a bit unfair. Still a great game.
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Post by goofyballer on Dec 23, 2022 23:35:52 GMT
half life 2 still holds up. I recall finding the ending absolutely brutal - like you're playing a shooter, and it's a good shooter, and then the devs are like "wait so how about if, to give this game the climactic experience it deserves, we...take all your guns away and only give you the gravity gun". And then Episode 1 starts off exactly the same way! Awful. I might try another Outer Wilds playthrough since it just got a next-gen upgrade for PS5 a couple months ago (the PS4 version had pretty awful performance regardless of whether you played on PS4/5). This is the obligatory reminder for anyone who hasn't played it that it's one of the GOAT and there's never a better time than now to try it out if for some reason you haven't! |
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Post by jmakin on Dec 24, 2022 0:09:59 GMT
I really tried outer wilds and it seems like a game I’d love but it did not grab me
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Post by jmakin on Dec 24, 2022 3:34:04 GMT
I just finished an interesting experiment in rocket league, I drive 3 different hitboxes - plank (long, low, and flat, almost like a board, hence the name), batmobile '16 (supposed to be a plank but i swear it hits different), fennec/octane (same hitbox but visually much different, so IMO different hitboxes), and dominus.
Dominus always felt best to me but tends to be the least forgiving hitbox of all of them, except maybe the plank. So for that reason I long favored fennec, whose boxy body type aligns nearly perfectly with the true hitbox, making it feel extremely "accurate."
In professional RL, barely anyone plays plank and when they do its usually the 16 batmobile - however, dominus is quite common and tonight after my experiments I think i figured out why. Dominus is a low, flat car (not as low or flat as a plank) that handles much better in the air and on the ground than the other two low, flat cars - breakout being the other one. Another reason I like it is it gets dribbles quite a bit easier, which I am good at, and when challenging, I like to flip the backside of my car up above the other one almost like a moving wall, and a longer car is WAY better for this than the much much shorter octane. Only problem is dominus is ever so slightly less wide, so I keep whiffing sometimes when I feel I shouldn't.
Anyway long story short if you like the handling of the octane/fennec but want a lower hitbox that dribbles better and gets nastier aerial hits, dominus is probably for you. I am playing the 22 batmobile and it may be the last car I ever play, finally, after like 6 years of trying to decide. it also kinda looks like my irl car which is cool too.
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