On the Nature of Things | Forum

Well, I wish 'em the best but yeah, I'm pretty burnt out on role playing. These things aren't always my decision though.

There is an eye on everyone's game of the year in Baldur's Gate III but it just looks like another thousand hour game.

I am okay with Tetris and Pac Man-- pick'd up Pac Man Championship Edition 2 on sale for 2 bucks. Played it for a bit in the before times. Fond memories.

yes, for me g the back catalog on steam is so vast I can happily stick to give aways and bargain basement sales on older titles pretty much indefinately.

the only thing I splurged on was cyberpunk, I only waited for it to be $50 instead of the release $100 and didnt wait till it hit $30 which is my usual method.

I did that because it was so damn pretty - its a technological marvel on a modern pc, ive never seen anything like it, tho im sure the other premium titles are in the same ballpark

I mostly enjoyed the game too - barring the eastern european morbidity which runs through and ultimately makes me less inclined to replay for replays sake

Im not very good with games as art - I prefer to enjoy them, much like movies.

music i have a bigger ability to enjoy the bleak, for some reason Im not sure of.

So called Art Games are the indie music wallpaper of today.

I'm sure there is one or two in this thread I gave a positive review for but what a disaster overall, and that is when we went hunting for something good.

Never have that problem with the art movie or art music.

We are nearing the end of Tears of the Kingdom-- I see it in sight.

Like a parabola, I'm comin' back round on this. Gonna miss playing it and while my criticisms still apply, it's been pretty fantastic as a game.

Tears of the Kingdom? Done, done and done

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2024 6:00 am

Def a PC game

From A PC game to a bunch of bastards in the void:

How does Void Bastards Work? A game that changes how you play it.

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Void Bastards is fun for a few hours with a solid concept but its not enough content to make any of it work for more than the initial few playthroughs.

Maybe that's because of procedurally generated levels...maybe.

While often the case, I'm not sure its really applicable here. When there is a handful of ship types with a handful of largely non-interactive rooms and 9 enemy types, there isn't a lot to randomly generate to begin with.

I got it in a humble bundle ages ago

Tried it briefly but it didnt hook.

I still like the idea of Void Bastards if not the execution.

Just read that it was an Australian/Canadian company, but its not immediately popping up how big Blue Manchu (the developer) is.

Reading an interview with a designer gives me the impression that a lot of time was spent working on or imagining how to incorporate influences in the game and not thinking about it as a game in itself.

Maybe an unfair assessment, maybe not; but there is too much influence poisoning or poor soil to grow anything out of.

We are a quarter of the way through Red Dead Redemption 1.

Okay, it's pretty great despite its age and mechanical issues. There is very little difference between this and 2. It's all one piece.

Coming at it from playing 2 first, we are still leaning slightly into the 2 camp as being the better one. We are also have a certain perspective unintended chronologically. The prequel game (2) colors this one. I know these characters, so to speak.

For a video game the writing, story and voice acting are excellent. I think 1 has already had too many 'on the nose' moments.

While the protagonists in both games are for story and practical purposes very similar, so far, I like Arthur Morgan better.

I played rdr1 on the ps3 to the ending.

all this time later I cant really remember much about it, but the graphics were top shelf for the time and the gameplay/story good enough to keep me going - and im not much of a story in computer games person.

John Marston is a detached, fool. All the guilt of the past they try to hit him over the head with doesn't really stick. Even if it did hit, the game is anxious about making him an actual bad guy.

Most likely.

Still, the story kicked along in a vaguely interesting enough manner to enable some good set pieces.

Yes, it is still well done comparatively to other games.

It is just less interesting than the prequel, so far.

John now, as then is a good or conventional man forced into bad situations or forced into doing bad things. While he seems mildly ashamed of his past wrongdoings, none of them stick to him because of this plausible deniability or layer of naivety the story creates for his character. He acknowledges early on that killing is the only thing he's good at but it's framed as a bit of forced modesty and not who he really is. The story wants an avenging angel reconciling with his past but the player knows John as being a funny, relatively smart guy who is always finds himself in the wrong place mixed up with the wrong people. He's not a real outcast, just some guy way too passive for his own good and perhaps lacking a real moral compass to navigate frontier life.

In contrast, Arthur Morgan is a bad or selfish man desperately attempting to find some good in himself; in others; in the world as its all collapsing. What good means to him changes radically as a sense of impending doom sharpens and he is unable to live under some of his own fantasies which once propelled him forward.

I am one of the philistines who skips the cutscenes if they arent working for me.

I watch movies, i play games, i am not the target audience for interactive movies.

I do remember it being the first time i enjoyed the horse riding in a game.

We finished Red Dead Redemption.

It did pick up story wise, sometime in the middle of Mexico.

Moreover, the set pieces for the shootouts became a lot more fun too. I had a blast (and I'll wear the pun) stopping the bank robbery, protecting trains, storming a fort with the US army.

We must have missed a few side quests along the way despite keeping an eye out at all times for them. Like the Undead Nightmare expansion, I'm not sure if I'm really interested in seeing it through. We also skipped the treasure hunting after the first or second map; I don't know what that all led to except for unlocking an outfit (or outfits).

While the horse riding was satisfying, it also showed its age a bit. The real killer was the pacing and long distances in craggy and mountainous Mexico. So many missions would require tracking across the map on these long horse rides; only to bring the characters back across the map and then repeat the process. So much time wasted just making sure we're climbing the right cliff paths to get back and forth was a motivation dampener.

aah, those do bring back memories.

the "too long walking/riding/driving" thing is a common game play extender - tho apparently its also used as a secret loading screen for bringing in new content - ditto hallways, elevators and caves

Yes. All sorts of tricks to hide the seams. And it is an ancient game in many ways, like one of these titles are the precipice of what was to come, and the old standards just before it-- held back by console tech that now seems closer to the original playstation/xbox than even what the next generation was capable of.

We did run into what I suspect was cached memory, loading glitches on the Nintendo Switch the farther into the game we got. That's ancient tech too, obviously; but more recent than the game itself. Subnautica was the only other game we've had to consistently, properly turn off and reset the console to get working. That game though is more recent and more intensive.

Microsoft had a summer showcase, don't know what it was called specifically but saw a few entries; seems like they are going all in on the big name IPs that they've been buying up the last few years.

Doom: The Dark Ages looked good but makes even less sense than regular Doom. The tagline on the trailer was, "Before he was a hero, he was the weapon of gods and kings." What's that suppose to mean? Hah, it seemed like IP creep- read a suggestion that the game probably started as something Quake related and transfered over.

Saw they are remaking Age of Mythology. I'll be keeping an eye on that one.