JCC Gaming Förceboat Parté - JC G4m3z thr34d (Gaming General Discussion)

Who said anything about 19th-century ideals?

 

An hour and a half in, Ghost of Tsushima is one of the most aesthetically pleasing games I have played. The music! The sound effects! I AM A SAMURAI!

 

Yep. This it nails perfectly.

The other aspect I really like is the speed of Jin's responses to button presses - it is instant, haven't seen that before like in this. (Heard God of War is supposed to be great in this respect, it's on the backlog)

 

Implicit biases in the engine.

 

Believe it or not the water level has never been the issue for me. Once I figured out the optimal order to disable the bombs, as well as knowing when to switch between turtles, I could beat it pretty much every single time. It's everything after that level that I couldn't get past.

 

Played about 2 hours of Ghost over the past 2 days @Jedi Ben is so right about the first hour, something I also heard Giant Bomb express: It's bad. Incredibly stilted video game-y af stuff that makes me wonder if they didn't really know what to do for an opening. Very perplexing. I feel like I hadn't played something like it since the start of the previous console generation.

Then when you get into the open world it's much much better. I can see myself having a great time with it. Unlike Ben, I love the wind effect. The day-night cycle stuff is gorgeous. Already one of the most beautiful games this gen. Combat is nice so far, interested to see what it's like once stances get introduced.

 

Oh, I love the graphic effect of the wind but I find it hard to work the actual direction. As to the first hour, it starts off brilliantly, you fight on the beach, storm the castle and then it hurdles off a cliff.

I've very mixed feelings on Ghost.

When it works it can be fantastic, but often a few too many things get in the way of it being, from enemy mobs rushing you, to a camera that is practically an immortal enemy, to enemies spamming unblockable attacks a bit too frequently for my liking.In some fights it was nigh-on sequential or every other move - doesn't make for good combat - hey, you know that block you have? It's going to be useless at least 50% of the time. Oh and that eternal enemy that is the camera? Never misses a chance to hide an enemy. On one Standoff it stuck an entire wall across my view, on another fight between trees, it used those to block over half the screen. The combined effect of all this on combat? It quickly devolves it in a button bashing mess. If they really wanted that combat in the start to be through the entire game then they needed to code less spammy AI.

Oh and the half bow, let's not forget that - I hate the half bow. The whole having to manually adjust for arrow curvature is awful - there's been a lot of arrow games over the last few years, which is why this shows up as being so awful. Do I have any confidence as to where the shot will go? No. Headshots? Don't make me laugh - there's no chance of that on this bow. Combined with no ability to resupply arrows easily, on the first mission I went with 'screw it, let Sensei kill them all'. At the storm the fort part, after killing the leader and some other grunts, let him do the rest of the work in shooting the other enemies because it was that awful. In effect, in this game, the target for your arrows isn't the arrow target displayed on screen, where will it go? Who knows?

This said, I have, by some miracle, killed 3 leaders to unlock the wind stance and that can be quite smart. When certain conditions are met: You are able to see all your enemies, you have the space to manage the battle, you can then use some tactics allied to a strategy of spreading your foes out and that can be very satisfying. The most fun I've had is these random brawls, sometimes between bandits and Mongols and you just waste the lot of them. Or it's one or the other and you start with a Standoff, which, when there isn't a wall in the way, is very epic. They've started doing these feint attacks to try to dupe Jin, but they haven't worked. The 'end suffering' bit never gets old either.

Onto animals - why the hell do animals have unblockable attacks? If I block a bear with a katana blade, the bear should bisect itself! Have got a little better, killed a couple of boars earlier and have managed to kill a few bears. I feel the same way about these as I did the AC animals i.e. how can a wolf be Level 40?

So, yeah, combat is highly variably but following a bird or fox to a secret of some kind - be it shrine, hot spring, dye merchant or bamboo chop, is hugely satisfying.

I've done a number of major on-foot journeys - one benefit is getting loads more resources, the other is you really get to appreciate the world design. The Golden Temple region has been much talked about and it really lives up to that, utterly stunning. Got one remorse boost and a bit more health, which was the only reason I managed to do a couple of quests including a duel that was a graphical masterpiece, but not much fun to play. Exploring the world is what I've enjoyed the most, even if it does sometimes throw up an 'area of overwhelming enemy forces' warning now and again. The way you just stumble on quests feels very emergent. The one thing I'm not a fan is the amount of manual searching and lack of easily spotted visual cues that the game really, really likes.

I'm enjoying it to a certain degree but, like AC Black Flag and Syndicate, I really doubt I'll finish this. Might get to explore the world but might have to settle on just a third unless they add a very easy - no unblockable attacks - mode. It's also saved me £30 as I now know not to bother with Star Wars:Jedi: Fallen Order. When it's good it's fantastic, but when it's bad it's horrible and you can go from the one to the other very fast.

One last point - Assassin's Creed in Japan? No. Absolutely not. Thinking that it is will only get Jin killed. It's very, very different - Jin's climbing ability is far more limited compared to his AC counterparts, to the degree that I'm not sure how anyone gets on roofs at all, but maybe another quest will make that a bit clearer, as he currently he climbs little.

 

I definitely preferred JFO's combat because it's a bit more Soulsy that this seems to be. But I have to dive into Ghost a bit more to experience what it has to offer.

Just started the half bow mission this morning, looking forward to getting that weapon.

The standoffs are a lot of fun, great little feature.

 

Er, that's not much of a recommendation for me to get it!

 

So, what difference does 2 hours and 45mins make? (Roughly the time since my previous Ghost post) Well, when it involves a third session of Ghost, that saw me obtain the double stand-off technique, get a new set armour that changes how the game plays and have nabbed a rather sweet dodge strike move.... Quite a bit!

When I played Spider-Man, I found the combat there, with the sheer variety of enemy types it throws at right from the start, quite difficult. To the degree that I was wary of progressing story quests, but when I did, what happened? The story quests were much easier than the random fights the game had thrown at me. So it proved to be so here. I went to do the Lady Masako quest, expecting all manner of game rubbish - instead I get this new armour that boosts defence, health and boosts resolve when hit! This is one hell of a boost. At the same time I also got a bow upgrade and, since then, and only since then, I've actually been able to hit things!

While that quest does have a tailing mission - why do these things still exist in games? - it was a fairly forgiving one. What the followed was an epic fight with about 10 bandits. I started it with a successful standoff, didn't nail the second one but that doesn't have the failure hit of the first. I then carved a bloody swath through the bandits, flipping between stone and water stances, then took out one of the spear enemies with a dodge strike! It was massively epic. The quest resolution was very fitting too - really like Masako.

After this, did a spot of clearing cloud from the map, found a couple more fox shrines, took out a leader to free a bridge - and it was easily the best run of the game so far. I still maintain exploring the game is it's ace card, it looks stunning. Oh and I have composed a couple of haikus.

 

People thought Ghost of Tsushima’s opening was bad? I thought it was pretty incredible. Khotun is a great villain, and his introduction was fantastic.

 

It's the bit after that.

Everything you have covered up to that point is pretty damn epic, though I loathe the fight-you-cannot-win set-up. Saw that coming as soon as it started.

 

I'm interested in Ghosts of Tsushima, but I'm so tired of big budget video games at the moment.

Then again, at the other end of the scale, I'm finding Deadly Premonition 2 really difficult to play. I'm glad it exists, by all rights it shouldn't exist. But it's a technical disaster. Not charmingly janky like the original, I mean bad. Frame rate often literally dropping to 0 levels of bad.

And while I like video games that don't hold your hand, so I admire not marking on the world map where the player is intended to go, fetch quests should at least hint at where (And in this game's case, when) you are supposed to go. Not let you scramble around trying to figure out how to solve a quest with a pretty vital game mechanic locked behind it.

I know that it had a really small budget and development cycle, even compared to the first game, and Swery has come out and said they're working on a patch to fix these things (Along with some some apparently necessary rewrites. I haven't got to the scene in question yet, so I can't say how bad it is for myself. But props to Swery for taking the criticism rather than whining.) so I'm hoping it can be polished up enough to sit alongside the original as the little janky cult classic that it should be.

But, man, someone at the publisher looked at DP2 in its current state and thought it was good enough to kick out the door? Just... ooph.

 

I wonder if the publisher was aware DP = janky = amusing but didn't quite know what constituted good jank as compared to the bad jank you're describing and just let it all slide.

 

That's what I'm assuming, because that pretty much sums up a lot of the public discourse surrounding the game too.

 

I get why you might have big game fatigue right now, Chew, but I do hope you play Ghost eventually. I am really loving it. Composed some haiku this morning... Don't think I have ever composed poetry in a game before.

 

I'll definitely get around to it Ray, I'll just probably wait a couple months first is all. August and September seem to be a bit dry for releases anyway.

Honestly though, the next big game I'm actively looking forward to is Crash Bandicoot 4. The fact that the publisher is Activision is gross, being excited for one of their games is like having sold my soul to the devil, but I loved the first three games as a kid, and Toys for Bob look like they've done a magnificent job in bringing the series back without being tied to the original source code, like the remakes were.



That and I'm just in the mood for vibrant colours and nice animation.

 

Yeah there's honestly nothing new I am gonna play until PS5 comes out now basically, after GoT. So I personally am planning to dip into the backlog... Especially Yakuza I think.

 

About time Solo-chan.

Back to other Japan game... Today's session was an 80-20% split of awesome and awful.

The awful was an abominable stealth mission to rescue Taka, It was utter ***** using game devices that even Assassin's Creed retired three years ago.

But outside of that? So very good. Pulling off a double Standoff is so very satisfying. I was going round this Mongol-held village and this time, this time, it was more stealthy - pulled off three headshots with the upgraded Half Blow, managed to observe the mongul leader, then assassinated him, mopped up the rest of the village. It was the first time the game had felt like I was playing Bat-Samurai.

One odd one was I was liberating this Mongol-held dojo, went round the place killing the mongols, and their dogs, then blew up their black powder cache and then after I was done thoroughly ****ing up their plans, the Mongol leader then saunters for a duel. Why the hell was he when I was wrecking his entire base? This duel had a very different outcome to the previous one, where I pretty much got lucky - no, on this one the warlord got annihilated.

Did a couple of other sidequests, one involving a haunted forest. The other was the very emotionally charged A Mother's Peace for Masako. It also involved killing Mongels, a lot Monguls in what was probably the biggest fight I've had so far.

Some of the fights have been incredible- turn up, 30 seconds later there's five corpses on the floor. Jin has just torn through them, executing them one by one. Don't always pull it off but the dodge strike is a really sweet move.

To be honest Chew, this likely won't do much for you now if you're tired of open-world games, it does bring a handful of new things to the party but, on the whole, it's more of effective synthesis than innovation.

 

Yeah, I don't usually play budget/AAA games back to back. For example, after finishing The Last of Us Part II I've now been playing Stephen's Sausage Roll.

 

Guys I got Ni No Kuni for Switch on an Amazon sale. Gotta finish the Xenoblade Chronicles DE extension, but then I will start that as my night time Switch game that I like to play in bed.

 

Ni No Kuni is great. Definitely a special game.

 

I'll probably have to implement that rule for myself in future.

Looking back on the year, 2020 has been absolute garbage for bigger. That's probably, in part, due to the Coronavirus causing a slump in releases. Yet it's still shocking to look back and realise the only major release I really liked is Doom Eternal.

And even with Doom Eternal, which I ended up adoring after a shaky start, I still preferred Doom 2016.

Oh I think you'll adore Ni No Kuni. It was one of the best games on the PS3.