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Joined 2Y ago
Cake day: Jul 04, 2023
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- 14d
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First some definitions or my understanding of terms.
JRPG - Story heavy, narrative driven games originating mostly from Japan with anime tropes and featuring turn based character battles commonly
Core gameplay - The main gameplay element of a game, for example Dodging, rolling and spacing combat in Elden Ring, Monster Hunter. Character placement, team builds, XCOM, TRPGs
Sub system - Mini games or the social systems in Persona games, a secondary gameplay element that is different and unrelated to core gameplay
I've enjoyed Yakuza Infinite Wealth, FF7 Rebirth and Persona these few years which led me to think that I enjoyed "JRPGS" so I booted up old "Tales of" game (action battle) and am having a hard time pushing through
I then realised that the JRPGs I've played have a lot of investment into sub systems, Yakuza basically being a collection of minigames polished over several series. FF7 adding even more mini games than the original in a 1/3 installment and also having a non turn based system and Atlus' games having a large chunk of it being a dating sim on top of its flashy UI for the turn based battles.
I think the core reason is that other gameplay mechanics, from driving to shooting to RTS to combat have high skill ceilings such that people playing CS can transition to Overwatch and then to Marvel Rivals and maintain their level of training over years. RTS have high skill floors for PVP. Meanwhile for single player RPGs without deep builds and customisation, you should be able to complete the story and endgame with grinding or items or clever builds. The first 2 being the easiest and least 'fun'
This has led to mainstream JRPGs needing sub systems to support the price tag while CRPGs like Baldurs Gate 3 have builds and branching stories to make it fun and replayable.
On the other hand Dragon Quest 3 hd-2d remake sold like gangbusters so maybe I'm off on this
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Got the gamepass deal for $1 again, somehow, different email? So I took the opportunity and holiday season to try out Black Ops 6 and Diablo 4. Obviously the main reason was to play Indiana Jones, but that's another story..
Here are some points I noticed
- The developers expect you to know the game, no more handholding and tutorial for the 22nd game in the series, you already know the buttons to shoot and crawl and sprint crouch. Zombies mode was a revelation, insanely complex since I played the first one and the tutorial only scratched the surface
- This ties in to new mechanics, new game, new things to do right? BO6 has a grappling hook, while not new(?) introduces some sort of proof of concept and different gameplay in a couple of levels which shakes things up, in Diablo, I didn't notice anything new, it feels like a mobile game now though.
- They have no time to chill, devs think Gen Z or whoever their audience is has no time to admire the view. In old Cod, MoH games, you could blow up some tanks and then admire the French countryside after saving the town, here its curated so tight that I don't even think 5 seconds is allowed for you to explore or relax, its crafted like a movie, every 10 steps there must be a guard standing still for you to stealth kill. In Diablo, you go into a field and there are 20 wolves there for no reason and a bear. I thought you started with a 'normal' amount of wolves and then move on to ridiculous numbers in the endgame or post game. You also level up so fast and get access to the entire skill tree
- Diablo's story is now entirely detached from its gameplay, the protag can see the villains cutscenes due to a plot device, no more clever writing to explain events after, you get rewards not from an NPC but from the menu from completing world events, and somehow there are localised areas of 100s of enemies just waiting for you to start a fight in a random spot on an open field, theres a GPS showing you the way to the next objective
Overall I played both for the story and B06 was short and serviceable and let the player control the amount of lore they wanted (they did rip a level right from Control though) The presentation was top notch and had enough themes to make things different, it was also polished to the point where there were no rough edges and dare I say no personality.
I was completely uninterested in anything Diablo talked about, the intro was interesting then it turned into a bunch of fetch quests
My short review on Indiana Jones would be the opposite of Veilguard "It's a good game but not a good dragonage game"
"Its not a great game but a good Indiana Jones game"
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We know that certain games are big, like BG3 or Persona 5. But recently games like FF7 rebirth and Indiana Jones just kept going on and on past "Act 3". Also Rise of the Golden Idol seemed a little short to me
Are developers getting more efficient with generating content?
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The 9800X3D just came out, so I'm looking to upgrade my 2017 PC to join the modern era, which means I'm waiting to play Baldurs Gate 3 (runs, but not ideal), Dead Space Remake (poorly optimised), Space Marine 2, Cyberpunk, Metaphor etc when I build my new rig in a couple of months.
In the meantime, I've finished some indies like Rise of the Golden Idol, first run of Satisfactory, did the Elden Ring DLC.
Then, there's the gap from now till the next RGG game and Monster Hunter, which would really scratch that action, open world itch.
Any recommendations for action games that feels like you're doing some exploration? Trying to get into a flow state. I may actually take a break and go read a book instead.
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We're all just roleplaying as our ancestors hunting down mammoths and giant sloths to get fur and meat. No wonder it's so addictive.The book is Sapiens btw
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I want to play an easy shooter where you feel like you're in a flow state aiming at targets, the only time I've ever felt like that was in the PS2 Medal of Honour, kneecap, helmet shot, head shot or up till MW4 original.
I've tried the latest CoD and the cinematics and cutscenes are just overblown.
Borderlands would be a kind of turn off your brain type but they haven't made a new game in awhile.
Helldiver had great shooting but the grind, limited levels and multiplayer means I wasn't too invested in it after a hard days work
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Iirc he helps venom escape with the truck, was that really him or a hallucination? Did he reappear in the game?
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Haven't played the game in awhile, iirc he helped venom escape and drove the truck before disappearing.
Was that really him or a hallucination? Does he reappear again?
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Haven't played the game in awhile, iirc he helped venom escape and drove the truck before disappearing.
Was that really him or a hallucination? Does he reappear again?
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3 big ones recently, this year was God of War Ragnarok, FF7 Rebirth and Jedi Survivor
Back when 3d games were new, tomb raider, prince of persia etc the traversal was the challenge, the gameplay.
Eventually they got watered down and simplified, now they are cleverly disguised choke points while the open world or boss ahead loads.
You'll notice the squeezing between narrow walls to separate 2 areas or a simple climb against a flat wall just before a boss. I think Uncharted was the first to do this as they moved away from climbing and focused more on combat and puzzles.
There is no reason to actually have the characters climb anything if it's not fun or there are better ways of traversal, GoW being the biggest offender here
Jedi Survivor embraces traversal more but still locks you out with invisible walls and floors that kill you
I think I might prefer the elevator loading screens from Elden Ring, at least you get to stretch out your fingers when waiting
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I missed the days of Uncharted and Tomb Raider, those games don't exist anymore, instead open world "everything games" have taken its place, AssCreed, Horizon, Fallen Order etc.
So Jedi Survivor scratches that traversal itch well, it has limited platforming sections and exploration, but enough to get the sense of wonder I had previously in the worlds of the old games.
It does a lot of things and takes inspiration from Souls likes, adventure platformers, hack and slashes, open world etc, but does none of it particularly well. This iteration focuses more on platforming and metroidvania as compared to the first game, here are some things that I wished were better.
1. **It takes too long to get good**. The setup at first seems very similar to Uncharted, solid platforming and combat wrapped around chunky set pieces placed in each act, however for some reason, Cal starts with losing all his abilities from the previous game and has to start again, you also slowly gain platforming abilities like air dash similar to a metroidvania. So you start the game feeling very anemic, a weak Jedi who can't do much but just gets pushed along the story.
The first point where I felt the game had potential was an amazing boss fight set piece on a desert planet, at that point, the initial hours of the game were a slog, probably only sustaining interest from Star Wars fans
2. **It hates Lore** I don't mean the canon and Lucasarts vs Disney and all that, I myself am not familiar with the "correct" story, by Lore I mean how things work in universe are not consistent or sensical at all.
In one part of the game, you put on an imperial disguise and depending on the customisable hair and beard style you have, you obviously look extremely out of place, the disguise is also of a high ranking officer, but the NPCs of lower rank look down on you.
There are several simple visual or dialogue changes that could have been done, for example removing the rank from the uniform or acknowledging that the designers thought about imperial ranks. There are also problems of weird architecture, random items scattered around the galaxy which I'll cover in my next 2 points.
3. **Exploration with no rewards** Speaking of items, the loot in the game is terrible, consisting mostly of cosmetics, so while you take on a tough platforming challenge, you may end up with not much at the end, this also really brings up the Lore part, like finding paint colours for your lightsaber in a meat packing factory, or force essences in random caves. Exploration is fun for its own sake and there are "audio tapes" of side stories when walking around, but again very uninteresting stories that do nothing.
4. **Combat** Lightsabers don't cut people in this game, behaving more like glowy baseball bats in combat and act like movie lightsabers in cutscenes. As many people have pointed out, the combat was probably started out as a Sekiro style parry into deathblow mechanic that was downplayed so that casual players could get into it by mashing. Only 1 stance out of 5 has animation cancel and the most enemy attacks are not well telegraphed, bosses are designed better, but they still take 20-30 light saber cuts to bare skin without so much as a scratch. The stamina and health mechanic doesn't gel and I wished they had designed a system that had the lightsaber cut off armor and limbs if they didn't one a one hit kill.
Force powers are not integrated well, being quite useless against strong enemies, obviously dark side powers are more flashy and easier to implement, but maybe we'll see it in the 3rd game
I did enjoy the puzzle sections of the game but it felt like it ought to belong and it completely different series altogether, the mish mash and inconsistent vision for this series really stops it from becoming one of the greats
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Back in the day, Asscreed 1-4 and Far Cry 2-3, there were constant improvements and innovations in level design, mechanics, graphics, cool shit to do basically.
Recently the 2 "highly praised" Star Wars "open world" games essentially haven't moved the needle but are just Generic Game with a star wars skin
1. The new Open Worlds, firstly we have the Horizon Dawn killers, Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring. Exploration focused game design, unique mechanics include unrestricted interaction and massive dungeons hidden behind tiny doors. Honourable mention to Death Stranding where deep mechanics are overshadowed by top notch facial animation by famous actors
2. Hero shooters, not a fan, but probably huge improvements and gameplay mechanics in Apex, Overwatch, Fortnight, maybe someone could chime in
3. RPG, Baldurs Gate 3, an impressive step up from Witcher 3 where every choice is considered, voice acted, millions of lines of dialogue, every player thought predicted by the designers.
4 The indies - usually the place for innovation but recent indies are super polished for small teams, bug free, fully thought out, addictive game loop, Balatro, Tactical Breach Wizards, Animal Well,Thank you for Coming.
In summary i think the industry is just spread out across more budgets, team sizes and countries now, no longer are the days when western Devs come up with fun or innovative AAA games, the focus more is on casual appeal and form over function
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It seems the general direction the internet is going and I'm all for it
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First hour of the game I googled "Aloy Talks too much"
I just finished the Elden Ring DLC and the Tomb Raider remastered trilogy. These games are 30 years apart but share the same mostly quiet protagonists.
Lara is alone, doesn't try to solve the puzzle for the player in the first 5 seconds, let's the player explore and figure things out and soak in the atmosphere. Aloy is as chatty as Nathan Drake but she's just muttering to herself in the wild, she even narrates her actions like an audiobook
The constant hud and text over every in world item also ruins the immersion. Yes I get that you don't see items in Fromsoft games, you get that streak of light. But Horizon firstly hides the item in their busy environment design then forces you to press a button to prompt that streak of light, for immersion!
Opinion from someone not into live service games. I’ve played Destiny and found the story pushes you along, a lot of interesting set pieces and bosses and expansive world, but that’s on a whole different budget.
Helldivers gets the core gameplay there, but it’s very grindy. You essentially loop into a small flat world without any landmarks and use the mini map to head to the objectives. Which are mostly kill stuff. You interact with a console sometimes.
The meta game is just unlocking new weapons and costumes. You do get early taste of better weapons if you team up with higher level players
The game is most fun in a team, solo is good to learn the ropes but gets tedious quickly. There are no roles or tactics like in Deep Rock Galactic
Enemy variety at least for my brief time playing is very low, there are 2 archetypes, varying from small mobs to the standard armoured large dude or charging monster.
The tutorial is fantastic and hilarious but that type of writing isn’t brought up again.
I would say wait for more content patches. Vehicles, more enemy types, linear worlds or more interesting objectives would drive up the variety and replayablity
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4 top tier single player games developers tasked to build live service games.
Naughty Dog hasn't released anything new, both sequels then silence. Suicide Squad kills the game studio. At least Arkane and Bioware are given chances to carry on with the next game.
We could have had the next big WB superhero game or Wolverine. Prey 2? There's a higher chance of Amy Henning working on a Soul Reaver game than ND coming out with an original IP
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I've never skipped a console gen starting from Super NES, PS1 through 4 plus the Switch Oled 5 years after launch of the OG Switch
It seems like exclusives are rarer now with Sony and Xbox pushing games to PC and Nintendo spending resources on remasters. COVID made it incredibly difficult to own a PS5 and they have some disappointing exclusives as well
What do you think? Any reason to own a PS5 or PS5 pro?
Up to 50 hours in it. Feels like a chore sometimes, when the runs don’t end with a bang, but with a slow steady growth or last spurt of opening a cache, they could improve the audio or visuals there.
The progression is unnecessarily slow, would have been ok with a 40 hour experience instead of a 100 hour one.
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They had GRRM write Elden Ring. They can get Amy Henning to write SR before she retires
It has Souls in the name already.
Lords of the Fallen did the dual world thing
A weakened hero taking on bosses who are literally gods?
Worst case we get the Lies of P studio to do it
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I haven't seen any trailers and things have changed in a decade and Ubisoft haven't made a universally acclaimed game in a long time.
There's simply no expectations that this game will be good unlike the overhyped Day Before, Starfield, NMS and Cyberpunk 1
What if...
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The stutter issues in Dead Space and bugs in JS. They are basically unplayable on PC right?
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Usually known for their internal online and mobile games. In 2023 we get Dave the Diver and Lies of P which are non mobile single player games.
Tangentially is 2023 chock full of great games because the pandemic held up the development of so many studios?
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Currently running a Ryzen 2600 and AMD 6700XT, older cpu with mid tier gpu. This is my round up of 2023 gaming
Installed Dead Space remake on gamepass, stutters everywhere, apparently not limited to older hardware. **Played Resident Evil 4 Remake** instead, fantastic reimagining of the original, super tight controls, darker tone, less annoying Ashley. Platinumed it on Steam.
Remnant 2 went on sale, got it, textures were weirdly smeared, FPS was low, **Played Lies of P** instead running on UE4 instead of UE5, caught off guard by how good the combat, story and music was.
Got Wo Long, felt like playing with glue, refunded, went for an older Team Ninja game** Final Fantasy Origin: Strangers of Paradise** not a fantastic game, but good for chilling with, pick up and play, run a few builds, crush chaos, felt the typical Team Ninja slow motion during busy fights.
Wanted to play Jedi Survivor or Starfield, heard about PC problems, **played Like a Dragon: Man who Erased his Name** instead, small side story, essentially the penultimate chapter of Kiryu's story, nothing new was added, story was great.
Hogwarts Legacy, ran terrible, boring gameplay. Hi Fi Rush, ran great, fun rhythm based combat. Cocoon, mild performance issues, but otherwise excellent puzzle game with mind bending twists.
All in all, it seems that games built on older engines still looked comparable to new gen games, but ran better. I imagine that once developers get the hang of things, the performance may improve. Capcom is great at PC now and EA still sucks. Indie games greatly depended if studios knew how to scope their project and play to their strengths.
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Just finished MFN, it had the same vibe, underlying horror as NFB, both focused on behind the scenes in television. Would be great if these 2 companies did references to each other the same way Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank did in the early days
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RE Engine: Monster Hunter, REMakes, DMC. All run beautifully
Idtech: Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal are super optimised on low end hardware
Then you have Unreal Engine 5 which needs top end hardware to run (Remnant 2, Lords of Fallen) and
Gamebryo/Creation which still has bugs from Morrowind in Starfield.
Not sure if related but City Skylines 2 needs several times $$ investment for slight improvements over Cities 1 on Unity
Now a splash screen either makes me smile or cringe. Just wished everything ran RE engine
FF Origin? Lies of P is still full price, Lords of Fallen has some bad reviews, Remnant 2 was good but badly optimised so I can't run it.
Opening up Morrowind to try to replace Starfield or DOS 1 to replace Baldur's Gate 3
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It's a really weird, happy and sad state of affairs.
You had Elden Ring, bunch of great indie games in 2022.
Then in 2023. Capcom hits it out of the park with SF6 and Remake4. Tears of the Kingdom came out. Then Baldur's Gate 3, a sequel 20+ years later. Metroid Prime remastered. Dead Space remake. Diablo 4
This was following Forsaken, Redfall, Gollum. Then you have Atlas Fallen recently with bad reviews
I'm having fun, but it seems indie Devs are having more success with original IPs and smaller scopes
Obra Dinn started this trend, Golden Idol games also have this mechanic