Being not-in to Fallout 4 might mean you’re done with very bad games that are awful + bad?
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Couldn’t sleep much last night, so I played Dragon Quest. I had continued right before the Krystalinda fight, because she kicked my ass a couple times when I last played. After coming back to the game, I crafted a better greatsword (the only weapon type worth using on the hero btw), Ground A Level for each of my party members, and whooped that witch’s ass.
Immediately after amassing all the orbs I made a beeline to the heart of Yggdrasil and WOW, that plot twist! So, after making a reunion with my fishy friends and reappearing on shore, I’m all alone. One thing I thought was goofy and funny is that, upon turning back into a Human, the hero still has the Luminary symbol on his hand, despite the goofy anime-esque “final” confrontation FMV, in which Mordegon strips the hero of his Luminary powers and steals his birthmark. I’m guessing they didn’t want to bother making a different character model texture. Or didn’t think people would notice that detail. Or maybe I am an idiot who completely missed something.
Anyway, I haven’t played since getting picked up by that fisherman. Particularly because I started to fall back asleep, but also because my computer starting getting hot and chugging it real bad. I’m excited to get to Hendrik, though. I really do love the character duality between him and Jasper. That Hendrik is a super thorough cheesey do-gooder of justice is very cute and I am ready to be best friends with him.
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You just gotta get into the right AAA games. Like Dragon Quest XI, which is very good and worth playing. And Nintendo games.
I would say that I found it simultaneously too hostile and too obvious – it was trodding such familiar ground that it didn’t really earn the discomfort. like I mentioned in the Prey thread recently, I do think it deserves credit for being just about the only narrowly construed system shock successor to really get that narrative arc right, and as a work of pure level design it’s as endearing as anything Arkane have released, but it fell into the Dishonoured 2 “so what?” trap for me that a lot of their games do. I still think Death of the Outsider is the only thing they’ve managed to release in their modern incarnation that’s compelling from start to finish and doesn’t outstay its welcome or excessively invoke the glory days of Ultima Underworld without having enough of its own identity, and that was practically a budgetary afterthought after the past two games even though it improves hugely on their storytelling and systems design – the levels themselves are only about as good, but those weren’t the problem in the first place. Mooncrash could’ve done likewise for Prey but makes a couple of really poor decisions.
Anyway the best big budget game of last year was Forza by a significant margin
I’m fine with mimics but even basic phantoms kick my ass… can’t effectively sneak past them or avoid them, lose a fair amount of resources when they inevitably attack me… and it just gets worse with more powerful enemies.
And, like, enemies keep respawning in areas I’ve cleared out, I never feel safe enough to explore and learn the damn story… It just feels like it’s constant tension instead of having an ebb and flow.
I bounced hard off Dishonoured too, even though I loved the Thief games and was therefore supposed to love it
Yeah, I don’t think Prey has anything it wants to say or push, other than a review and reconciliation of all the games it takes off of. It even manages to incorporate BioShock into its lineage (the art style, the moral judgment in the narrative) and make it seem like a useful branch.
Same thing happened to me. I don’t think Dishonored is like a sequel to the Thief series. The tone is just too different. I don’t enjoy it
Thief Simulator is at least as much of a Thief series sequel as Dishonored and maybe a better one depending on what about Thief your into.
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I got hard into Dishonoured, and then bounced off Dishonoured 2, then tried to get back into it and enjoyed the rest of the game. I don’t see it as a sequel to Thief either. It’s closer to Deus Ex, I think, but really it’s its own thing.
I almost bounced off Prey because it’s so unforgiving at the start but I stuck with it and it ended up as one of my favourite games of the decade. I heard they added a SUPER EASY I JUST WANT TO EXPLORE AND STUFF mode in a patch, so it’s nice it’s more accessible now.
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Always nice when MAME spits out a great game You’ve never seen.
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Holy shit what is this? So much about this game is amazing
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He appeared to have the opportunity to leave the room when confronted with the ape in a vest. I think we must conclude that things had gone to his head by that point.
Who do you suppose he is talking to at the end of the first area when he starts his sentence with “Look?”
There really are a lot of things to like in this game, such as the perspective shift in the fourth area.
Edit: Oh, I spoke too soon about the ape. I guess he didn’t kill it after all. But he did shoot up a lot of signs and storefronts in the mall unnecessarily. Also, I like that there’s suddenly an airboat in the mall, just to keep things moving.
That’s a lengthy closing cinematic, for an arcade game. Though his monument is a little inexplicable.
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Dishonored has weird psychic void whales idk what else you jokers need
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Damn, that setup! Tells you everything you need, doesn’t it. And then that rolling shooting action with two fronts! Looks awesome
I think Dishonored is missing a micro game and sense of progression.
Though it’s represented in the game, they cut down on the shelf-sniffing/petty burglary activities in Dishonored. Treasure or coin is sparser and less passed out, and it leaves less downtime activity in such a high-stress game.
Alternately, while hewing to traditional level setups, in a modern context Dishonored is a 30+ hour long game made of disparate levels. It’s extremely low on player agency features that have seen the most digging in the past decade – the Zelda, Metroid choice of “I want to go here” and “I want to do this” that results in open world has found its way into almost everything except Dishonored, which suffers in comparison.
For example, the standard way to incorporate Thief in modern level design would be to treat it like a Metroid map – levels connecter through winding passages through a city, shortcuts and travel unlocked gradually. It would feel like Bloodborne, effectively.
this is also why Death of the Outsider is the best one, because it’s shorter and reuses maps from mission to mission
(also: has fewer “get here and toggle the switch” objectives and makes better use of the game’s own verbs, has a less ham-fisted morality system that effectively restricts the game’s content, has a Hitman-like disguise power that can make hostile areas temporarily non-hostile, other things I could list)
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i keep buying video games and then being too depressed to play them. stop me please
i also got another r4 so thats more games to not play
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I was feeling kind of down on Sony’s first party (and third party seeding) production efforts for the past couple of years but it’s becoming clear to me that a significant chunk of what I was missing was shifted over to PSVR
I gotta say the PS4 has been probably the most straightforwardly great console since the 90s, like it’s always been a decent value (which they make up to some extent on software and peripheral prices vs PC; I still only have one controller and do my multiplaying elsewhere) and it gets so much good stuff. I’ve probably done 3/4 of my gaming on my computer since I got a modern GPU in 2016 but Sony has been consistently unignorable if you like games at all and in a way that feels largely benign which wasn’t really true for the PS2 or the PS3
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