What Video Games Have You Been Playing, Part 10: Or; A Shameful Display!

[Hygro]

Shazbot!

Yaaaaaaaaa loved that game.

 

[Takhisis]

I'm finally getting round to solving my CD/DVD drive issues.
I still have all three Freespace 2 CDs.
The launcher appears to be operational.

Also, the hilariously-translated JRPG I mentioned in another thread is still browing stronk.
And there's a thunderstorm coming in, of the type that just makes you start shouting ‘BLUCHER!’ whenever you can.

Hjälp. I am never leaving this home.

 

[cardgame]

And there's a thunderstorm coming in, of the type that just makes you start shouting ‘BLUCHER!’ whenever you can.

Was ist das?

I know it's German, but I don't get it.

 

[Dachs]

Was ist das?

I know it's German, but I don't get it.

It's a reference to Young Frankenstein.

 

[Takhisis]

I do not understand what went wrong in your life to make it require explaining, but at least we have Monsieur de Dachs to ride to the rescue.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

BLUCHER!!!!

 

[Phrossack]

I knew the reference but haven't seen the movie either. I just don't watch.

Nearly finished with my first Shogun 2 campaign. This is remarkable, not because it's hard at all--the Oda are a powerhouse--but because I usually lose interest long before then.

 

[Takhisis]

BLUCHER!!!!

*whinny*

JRPG's getting to me.

 

[Dachs]

Nearly finished with my first Shogun 2 campaign. This is remarkable, not because it's hard at all--the Oda are a powerhouse--but because I usually lose interest long before then.

Finishing any strategy game - whether Paradox, Total War, or even Civilization - is honestly a bit unusual for me. It's tough to stay interested for the entire run.

 

[cardgame]

I have seen Young Frankenstein, it's just been a while.

I don't think I have ever finished a strategy game since I was like 13 and did a WC in civ 3. I still remember the shape of the map... it was glorious. The conquest started with swordsmen and never stopped, all the way through to nukes. Took out like five pretty large civs, one right after the other, on my convenient crescent-shaped continent that mostly allowed me to fight them one at a time and then had to organize a massive ocean crossing invasion of the other continent, this time all of them united against me and sharing one religion. Ended up with probably a hundred cities. My brother had a similar game going on at the same time with an even larger map - he had 200 cities at least. It was kind of hell to be honest.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Trying to decide on my next game and after reading here, I've narrowed it down to Stellaris or Distant Worlds.
Any input would be appreciated. Thx in advance.

Hey @rah ,

I know this doesn't help your decision (or maybe it does), but both Stellaris (and almost all of its DLC) and Distant Worlds: Universe are on sale at Steam for 75% off for the next 48 hours. I just picked up Distant Worlds and it's pretty neat.

Good luck with your choice.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Hey @rah ,

I know this doesn't help your decision (or maybe it does), but both Stellaris (and almost all of its DLC) and Distant Worlds: Universe are on sale at Steam for 75% off for the next 48 hours. I just picked up Distant Worlds and it's pretty neat.

Good luck with your choice.

This calls for a public statement, copied from a recent PM I sent to someone else as they considered the Distant Worlds adventure.

A bit long winded, perhaps:

Spoiler :

I know there's a commonly held belief that games should be played unmodded to "see what you like" before changing anything up. If you are committed to that, no problem and more power to you, but I'm really not. So I'm going to share what I learned and you can take it or not as you see fit. But as an incentive; this game is EPIC. I played about five restarts getting my footing, all of them took days of real time, and none of them actually went anywhere near a conclusion. In fact they ended, at most, at the DW equivalent of the settler rush from Civ IV.

This is the biggest thing about vanilla that I learned, and I learned it the very first play. As soon as you develop warp technology battles become a matter of jumping your ships on top of the enemy, and engines which were eating up a big part of your warship's limited size become pretty much superfluous. The AI never figures this out, of course, so even though your tech at this point limits you to ships that are smaller you can load up with weapons and blast their useless engines off for them. In short, I concluded on the first pass that the game was...broken, really.

So, being a forum type guy I went and found the Matrix Forums and found, not surprisingly, that a lot of other people had been saying this since the game was released four years ago. Including a guy with the screen name RogerBacon, who broke into the code (won't say how, can't blame him) and made a hard code modification as opposed to everyone else who was modding using the usual changing descriptor data that is in files that were made for modders.

The Bacon mod does a whole bunch of things, most of them enabled/disabled/adjusted through an associated ini file. I have tried most of them and I leave a lot of them turned off...but his first goal was to establish gravity wells around stars where your ships cannot engage warp. This makes a bunch of design decisions critical as you balance engines/weapons. It also makes another design decision because the extent of the gravity well is affected by how much you stuff into your ships. Build them out to the full size your tech will allow and you get the full gravity well effect, go lighter and it takes less impulse running to get far enough out to engage. The real beauty being that for reasons no one can comprehend the AI tends to not maximize their loadouts anyway, and as noted the AI was always loading engines even when they were useless, so bingo-bango, the AI actually takes advantage of the opportunities presented.

Like I said in the open, I fully understand the 'play vanilla and see' theory even though honestly I've never endorsed it myself. But forewarned is forearmed, and this is a game where it really doesn't apply.

 

[Phrossack]

And it looks like Civ IV: Fall from Heaven 2 is now unplayable due to constant freezing and crashes.

I loved that game.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

@Dachs,
Have you played Mass Effect Andromeda? If so, what do you think?

 

[Senethro]

Apex Legends again: A reminder that accessibility is important, as is the need for designers to seek feedback from real users about how they use your software.

https://clips.twitch.tv/PluckyGiftedWaffleBuddhaBar

 

[Dachs]

@Dachs,
Have you played Mass Effect Andromeda? If so, what do you think?

I did play ME:A!

I had mixed feelings about it. I thought that it was buggier than it should have been and that emphasizing exploration so strongly was probably a weakness. The characters were fine. The main plot was okay. The voice acting was strong in a way that I constantly notice by its absence when playing non-BioWare games.

The combat was clearly an iteration on ME3's. ME3 had fantastic combat! It was one of the strongest points of the game, and kept the multiplayer running for an absurdly long time off the strength of gameplay and little else. And some of the things that they attempted to improve in ME:A's combat made some sense, like improved traversal. But in general, I felt as though ME:A's combat was more bullet-spongy than the earlier game's was, a problem that got significantly worse at high difficulty levels and high player levels, and that that was a serious flaw that made playing at high levels frustrating.

You could definitely tell that the game's development had been compressed to a dangerous degree. I felt that there were some pretty solid ideas in there, and that the game was fun enough for me to sink 200 hours across three playthroughs into it, but I wish that it were better than it was.

Apex Legends again: A reminder that accessibility is important, as is the need for designers to seek feedback from real users about how they use your software.

https://clips.twitch.tv/PluckyGiftedWaffleBuddhaBar

also, seags had a fantastic comeback match with dafran and unkoe that is very worth watching

 

[Phrossack]

Got Fall of the Samurai and Assassin's Creed IV today. I've only tried FotS, but it's interesting so far. Spearmen are lethal. Gotta starve out castles or the spears will get everyone you send in unless maybe you have swordsmen.

Naval bombardments are a nice addition, too.

And after re-installing Fall from Heaven and installing the More Naval AI submod, everything not only works perfectly, but the base game is better than before!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I did play ME:A!

I had mixed feelings about it. I thought that it was buggier than it should have been and that emphasizing exploration so strongly was probably a weakness. The characters were fine. The main plot was okay. The voice acting was strong in a way that I constantly notice by its absence when playing non-BioWare games.

The combat was clearly an iteration on ME3's. ME3 had fantastic combat! It was one of the strongest points of the game, and kept the multiplayer running for an absurdly long time off the strength of gameplay and little else. And some of the things that they attempted to improve in ME:A's combat made some sense, like improved traversal. But in general, I felt as though ME:A's combat was more bullet-spongy than the earlier game's was, a problem that got significantly worse at high difficulty levels and high player levels, and that that was a serious flaw that made playing at high levels frustrating.

You could definitely tell that the game's development had been compressed to a dangerous degree. I felt that there were some pretty solid ideas in there, and that the game was fun enough for me to sink 200 hours across three playthroughs into it, but I wish that it were better than it was.

also, seags had a fantastic comeback match with dafran and unkoe that is very worth watching

My biggest gripe with the game is that it feels bloated. You say it had a rushed development but I couldn't tell that from the volume of scripted dialogue and number of missions. Overall, the dialogue is quite fantastic and they really leverage it to fill out the lore and setting of the game. But at the end of the day, most of the dialogue does not have meaning or impact. The same can be said of the many side and fetch quests. They usually are not too tedious or boring but there are just so many of them and none of them matter. Yeah, I know side quests are called that for a reason but at some point there are so many to keep up with that they become as big a part of the game as the main quest, only nothing ties them all together.

The other gripe is that it sucks they dropped development of DLC. Even though the game was bloated, the overall story arch was missing key pieces and there was a lot of room for new, impactful story lines. The bugs didn't bother me so much. To be fair, I did not have it during the godawful launch and my experience with it came after the first major patches.

I think you are right on the combat, it is super gun heavy as of a result of the changes they made which added more restrictions on loadout and powers.

I was attracted to the themes of this game much more than the previous entries in the series. ME:A has less of a savior of the universe complex and has more emphasis on political settlements, exploration and colonization. I love it. Unfortunately, I have not been able to finish it because every time I play I get pulled into a couple of hours of side quests and never advance the story. At this point I'm trying to avoid side quests to just finish it but when you enter a large room with 15 side quest markers, it's tough to ignore them.

 

[Dachs]

My biggest gripe with the game is that it feels bloated. You say it had a rushed development but I couldn't tell that from the volume of scripted dialogue and number of missions. Overall, the dialogue is quite fantastic and they really leverage it to fill out the lore and setting of the game. But at the end of the day, most of the dialogue does not have meaning or impact. The same can be said of the many side and fetch quests. They usually are not too tedious or boring but there are just so many of them and none of them matter. Yeah, I know side quests are called that for a reason but at some point there are so many to keep up with that they become as big a part of the game as the main quest, only nothing ties them all together.

The other gripe is that it sucks they dropped development of DLC. Even though the game was bloated, the overall story arch was missing key pieces and there was a lot of room for new, impactful story lines. The bugs didn't bother me so much. To be fair, I did not have it during the godawful launch and my experience with it came after the first major patches.

I think you are right on the combat, it is super gun heavy as of a result of the changes they made which added more restrictions on loadout and powers.

I was attracted to the themes of this game much more than the previous entries in the series. ME:A has less of a savior of the universe complex and has more emphasis on political settlements, exploration and colonization. I love it. Unfortunately, I have not been able to finish it because every time I play I get pulled into a couple of hours of side quests and never advance the story. At this point I'm trying to avoid side quests to just finish it but when you enter a large room with 15 side quest markers, it's tough to ignore them.

When I talk about ME:A's development being compressed, I mean to say that although the game has lots of "stuff" in it (and it certainly does), that "stuff" isn't always super coherent or functional and fits together in weird ways. They were working on the game for some time, but repeatedly shifted priorities and took too long to settle on a core vision for it.

Andromeda's development did suffer from starting shortly after the massive success of Skyrim, when everybody and their brother thought that a zillion radiant side quests were awesome because, uh, worldbuilding or something. And the sort of emptiness that doesn't feel that weird in a Bethesda game feels really weird in a game from a studio most often lauded for the strength of its voiceover and characterization. But I'm sure that they spent a lot of time grappling with how to make exploration seem fresh and how to give the impression that there was something actually out there to find. Their solution was...imperfect, but they at least made a valiant try.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I was annoyed with the attacks on the portrayal of a transgender character in the game. In the pre-patched version of the game, this transgender character is quite up front with their M-F transition. The LGBTQ community attacked this because of how difficult and personal gender transitions are. The developers responded by rewriting the character such that you had to get to know them at a basic level through multiple interactions before they would discuss their gender transition.

That's all fine and is probably a more realistic portrayal of a woman that is transgender.

At the same time, I wish people would have acknowledged that the game was showing a future where transgender issues are so normalized that people don't have to avoid wearing their hearts on their sleeve. Some people are naturally upfront with personal struggles and major events in their life. I kind of prefer a future where someone can be transgender and it's such a little deal you bring it up in casual conversation to one where people still avoid the subject entirely and throw up walls around themselves in defense.