I can’t play this but I’m very awed at the prospect of a 2018 inhumanely elaborate and baroque AAA ultra-sim game that ages in real time Dorian Gray style.
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Compendium updated
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if you’re going to play gta iv on pc get the mod that adds back the music they just took out in april
hearing smashing pumpkins - 1979 on the radio really adds so much to the weird realism of it because thats really what the radio loves to play
you can go see katt williams and ricky gervais do standup
you can date like a fashion model and she will blog about you and you can go on the blog and read it??
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yeah maybe that’s the trick. engaging with this interface and these menus and controls becomes really exhausting really quickly
the controls for drawing a weapon/firing/punching/putting away a weapon are just absolutely unacceptable
also i ran into three different little side things the last time i played and each time something went wrong and i died and then i would load back in ready to try to deal with it again but instead i’d load in somewhere else and be very confused about whether the event had happened already or where it was or if i had actually loaded an old save but been put somewhere else and could go find the event or if i couldn’t access it anymore for some reason or???
also there’s all these times where you seemingly arbitrarily can’t draw your weapon or access your weapon wheel or run or access your horse loadout that seem to be tied to people talking and things happening but i can’t find any consistency with it and it’s annoying
it feels like there are lots of annoying things and i’m just stumblin and bumpin around into them the whole time i’m playing
i’m open to the idea i might like it if i spend some more time with it but so far it’s been a lot of work. for me the trinity for this kind of shit nowadays is mgsv/witcher 3/botw and basically i wish they’d nudged this one just a little bit more toward zelda
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Not being able to pick your weapon loadouts in camp and other certain places is really stupid. I have no idea why it doesn’t save what you last had on your horse but I’ll constantly start a mission and find myself thrown into it with just my pistols, no rifle or shotgun that I Always Have to Manually Equip every single time I get on my horse. You’re right that there’s a lot of little things that wear on you.
Speaking of kitchen sink design/storytelling, no spoiling but hoo boy Chapter 5.
GTA IV is the best 3d GTA but god I can’t imagine dealing with that input lag in 2018
and what i meant is that the spirit of that simulationism still remains large with western game design, but it doesn’t really inform the gameplay mechanics anymore that much. it’s all just illusionary simulationist graphics / animations / scenery while basic gameplay loop is just whacking moles left and right.
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I saw a job posting here from a Rockstar spin-off that’s working on a game that 100% simulates everything
edit here’s the most recent press bit https://venturebeat.com/2017/01/26/ex-rockstar-north-lead-leslie-benzies-forms-studio-to-make-everywhere/
I’m always worried about projects with too much liberty and too few constraints. Sounds like it’s one of those. Time will tell! He certainly has a great resume
whereas ironically it took Nintendo 30 years (or 20, or 15, depending on when you count from) to realize that they could actually save Zelda this way
having the same experience, i started playing smt if… instead
should i play botw
what videogames can’t be reduced down to this
From what I’ve heard and seen botw did pretty alright at interlocking its systems like wind, the glider, fire and lightning… I’ve seen some neat emergent stuff
yeah i started playing dqiv on my phone instead
uh yes you should play botw
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Oh, I would say much more strongly that it’s mostly dead, or rather that the two design trends converged & mutated as videogame production became more globalized. You’re starting to see flashes come back now as indie development has reinjected a lot of neglected branches of the design tree back into the conversation.
There’s a real important design decision underlying these feelings of meaningless in RDR2 and it really is that they’re trying to thread a needle between immersive role playing and accessible game. It’s a similar problem as sports sims like Madden; expectations built up over years into a mountain of complexity, papered over by an adoring fan base, and a struggle to reconcile these different-complexity play patterns.
RDR2 doesn’t have meaningful stat or ability progression, or important equipment loops, or really any choice the player can make to make themselves stronger. The micro-systems of reputation and cleaning and eating and clothes shopping are self contained on purpose. It’s meaningless because they don’t want it to intrude if the player doesn’t want it.
So I think their bet is that with enough density of micro-sim systems, and enough reactive elements like NPCs commenting and animations and real work underlying these things, they can have meaning without existing in the iron logic of game mechanics. And this is pretty crazy, because graphics and flavor and fluff always tend to disappear after a few hours behind the thinking patterns game mechanics insist upon. And they expect people to play Red Dead for a long time.
Well, we’ve got a step-change increase in density of detail designed to give context. And it certainly blows people away at first glimpse (witness the traditional games press reviews), but will it have longevity anything like GTAV multiplayer?
It works for me! I’m enjoying this much, much more than I anticipated. I’ve never liked Rockstar’s grotesques and didn’t like the first RDR on balance because the GTA ugly intruded into the simple elegaic pastiche Marston’s story wanted. But the focus on immersion has squashed Rockstar’s penchant for ugly into something more real (Dutch has been especially fabulous so far, in his depressive funk trying on models of leadership from his collection of What is America? books), with only the dozen or so capital-S Stranger missions a return to the unacceptably inhumanly cynical. And the catalog descriptions, unfortunately. Everything else serves a purpose of building a more plausible world to host every other possible Horse Fantasy and it’s excellent.
I think a lot about the imagery from my childhood and bicycle trips across states, RAGBRI and PALM and BANG and the imagery mixed into those memories from Tree of Life and Days of Heaven and it’s being evoked more beautifully than anything right now.
it’s the first game to capture the feeling of an inland lake and willows on the banks
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A surprisingly lucid take, this one.
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anyone else having a really hard time with the dueling controls?
I’ve had a much easier time with dueling than in the previous game. You only need to hold the trigger down halfway to make the meter fill (and you don’t have to fill the meter either if you don’t want, it just gives you a longer period of dead eye) and when you’re ready to fire just press the trigger all the way to draw and start aiming, then press it again to fire. How long you’re in dead eye will depend on your current dead eye stat which you raise by getting headshots, buying or crafting talismans or taking certain tonics like meat or chewing tobacco.
I found aiming in general much improved after I went into the menu settings and turned aim acceleration way up and the dead zone area way down.
shit like this
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