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

It was the way they responded that made it clear which end of the political spectrum they are on and how it was tied to modern European nationalism. The criticism as I recall was that the homogeneity portrayed in the game was not in fact historically accurate.

That said, when I looked it up it seems they are trying to say they have learned and are doing better with the followup.

 

Dragon's Dogma 2

This is such an up and down title.

Up: Slaughtering goblins, thugs, saurians, wolves, in various combinations is often fun. Magic effects are absurdly over the top too.

Down: The game plays cheap with its "dynamic" events, I'm to buy this Cyclops just happens to pick on a cliff edge? Or in the only route to a village quest objective just so happens to have a 4-health bar Minotaur in the way? (Solved that one by legging it by it.) Having a 5-health-bar Griffin flying around the opening area doesn't help either.

Up: Getting new skills unlocked helped, the skyward attack is good for harpies. As for what my Mage pawn is dropping on enemies due to all the upgrades is pretty awesome. After getting that, walked out of the hall and there's three Saurians attacking the town!

Down: Capcom's staff have a lot of skills, but 3D platforming is not among them. There were these two vile abomination platforming sections. And they did everything wrong they could - a bad camera, a poor sense of depth distance, just awful.

Done a couple of main quests, some exploration, plus ad hoc, spontaneous events that worked well. It's a weird game, especially as there's no sense of areas where you shouldn't be. Similarly, you can steal from anyone.

 

This song haunts my every waking thought. I still have two months to go.

 

Dragon's Dogma 2

Aka How to Play a Video Game Wrong

So, did a load of exploring, took out some Ogres, one in a cave along with dropping one into the river where it got eaten to death by the piranhas, and some Cyclops - including getting the Cyclops bridge trophy.

Then decided to try to get to Battahl, got a few levels up, it ought to go better, right? Well, it kind of did until I got closer to it. Then it dropped two armoured Cyclops, redfangs, orcs and harpies. My main pawn gets taken out, there's no riftstones to revive him. Leg it all the back, with an absurd enemy spawn rate.

After I get my main pawn revived, I try it again, this time noticing a ropeway transport lift. That gets me much closer and past the double Cyclops. Then I get to outside Battahl, get a residence permit, head to the gate and a Griffin drops in! I had just about taken one out earlier, in the Vernmund map. Here, it's far more ludicrous as there's no space for the thing to fly or fit in, but this is a game where a 10-foot wide Cyclops, with armour on top, can also fit through a narrow passage that's half its width. Cue epic fight and another dead Griffin.

Get into Battahl, find the person who I can buy a house from, get that and spot an Oxcart service! All this started from a notice at the checkpoint town saying it was suspended. Turns out I'm not supposed to hoof it to Battahl, but instead should, without any indicators to know to do so, talk to some random NPCs, who give you a quest to take out the source of the monster attacks that suspended the Oxcart service!

So, probably head back to the checkpoint and pick it up, now I know about it.

 

This looks like it can be a cute, independent game. No orks, trolls, dragons, or evil wizards to dispose of; just Hobbits socializing and tending to their domestic issues. Of course the graphics and animation leave something to be desired, but if the price is right then I could still see something like this become popular.

 

Dragon's Dogma 2

So, that other quest? The one to restore the Oxcart service from the checkpoint town to Bakbattahl? Turns out it was far more major than expected. First you track down the lair, then you have some major fights as you go through it. Then, at the end, a squad of guards turns up to help me in a huge barney across 2-3 areas of many enemies. The quest was absurdly ambitious and it pulled it off.

That was last night. Tonight's run? Lot more mixed. Did a quest where I got very limited identifying information, but it is all next to useless as the quest is set on this dim area. I looked up a guide and did it that way, which really applies to the game as a whole. It's so poor in how it supplies information.

Did a fight with a Golem - where both of my ranged pawns decided they were melee fighters! When the pawns work, they're fantastic, but they can also be immensely stupid. At the other end of the scake, another Griffin decided to bomb the marketplace outside the gates. Cue one dead Griffin.

Got some better gear which is certainly helping on killing the stronger enemies and taking the hits. The enduring problem I have is its colour indicators are not distinct enough. Light grey for allies / pawns and lilac for enemies are far too close together. Dittro light green for health, light grey fir lost but restorable health.

And yet, it would be so easy to fix this. A high visibility mode like Stellar Blade's would be fantastic in this game. Clearer visual cues would be good too, the status indicators are tiny and rendered in that same indistinct grey tone.

 

Still plodding through Outer Worlds to the bitter end. Again, Obsidian is great at characterization and dialogue but the setting isn't becoming any more defined for me.

Also, made it to Shady Sands in Fallout 1, so I'm awesome

 

Oh God, I wish more companies did showcases like this!

 

I can’t wait for the dunkey video where it’s just clips of reviewers saying “Persona Game of Thrones” over and over again.

 

Finally finished The Outer Worlds. Well, sort of. Much like New Vegas, there's an 'endgame' which is a point of no return. I had a number of side missions, and one of the DLCs, and I just reached a point where... I just wanted the game to be done. I did the endgame, speedran through it, and watched the twenty minute conclusion video. (One of the bad design choices - I managed to get an ID to basically sneak through all the levels of a corporate prison, but had the people I helped out show up to kill the guards... which wasn't necessary in the slightest).
Ultimately, it was a really 'meh' game. Completionist as I am, I didn't feel like doing everything. As always with Obsidian, the character development and dialogue was fantastic, but the game environment was very limited and not much developed. I don't plan on revisiting this one, but at least I didn't pay anything for it.

 

This looks like it could be a really fun sandbox game; featuring licenses from a fair amount of properties. I'd imagine the announced characters and worlds are just the beginning; leaving room for more properties (albeit through DLC/microtransactions) to come. It sort of reminds me of Disney's ill-fated Infinity game; which of course had just about every Disney owned property you can think of by the time it went offline for good.

 

Did they ever put out an edition of Disney Infinity that just came with all of the campaigns and characters unlocked, no physical figures required? I’d love to give that a spin if it exists. A couple friends and I got super into that game for a hot minute back in the day.

 

Not that I'm aware of. There's a local store near me called Video Game Trading Post (I think it's like a spinoff of Gamestop) that has a slew of retro and retired games as well as dozens of those physical figures from games like that. They are priced at more than they're worth though, at least IMO. You can get them on eBay for about $5 each. I still own about five of them, including Ahsoka.

 

Much praise for Sea of Thieves as it launches on PS5 and its new Season 12 update

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2...-youll-sail-youll-drink-grog-until-youre-sick

 

Dragon's Dogma 2

If it just dropped all the bullcrap, it could be fantastic but as it is? It's a bad mess I'm feeling rather sour on.

Quest 1: Find kid taken by wolves - turns out, in a time-sensitive quest, you're supposed to chill out and wait until night time to follow some flowers that glow in the dark. Screw that, went there in day time, found the kid, started walking back. Cue goblin, harpy, sauruan and an ogre attack. Then when I get the little git back to the town he stops dead. Turns out I have to trigger a cutscene, do that then get it finished.

Oh yeah, in all of this, every single Oxcart ride gets attacked and, after I save them, legs it! Caught up to one of them and the guy's trying to get more money out of me, so I killed the ox, screw that guy.

Quest 2: A "phantom oxcart" turns out to be a pawn enslaving operation. Get told to be a pawn - translation: unequip everything. Then there's a goblin attack, where the bastards are throwing molotovs! Say goodbye to half your health. Then you have to take some hits from racist cats, then, worst of all there's a fight with far too many guards, where you can re-equip, but that doesn't help much because they all have loads of health and will frequently stun lock you! It was cheap, vile, lazy design. Lost two pawns, nearly ran out of healing items. It's an abomination of a quest that Capcom should be ashamed of.

It also shows up the big problems of the game - inconsistent information display. You get attacked by five enemies? It'll display health bars for one to two of them. Is that individual ally or enemy? Oh, they're trying to stab me. The camera frequently sabotages in any major sequence, zooming in and out at random. Oh and magic effects completely blocking your view.

Quest 3: Even triggering this was a pain in the arse, but do everything I should do, including a step that you would only know to do from a guide. Get told to follow Brant to "safety", doesn't happen, get attacked by the guards. Cue that plague of open world games, of "immersive world" stories: the telepathic, infinitely respawning super-cops. End up in jail, break out, every guard instantly attacks and teleports in friends. Turns out the only way I could solve it was legging it to the slums, to the tavern and passing time to reset everything. There is no bounty clearance / reputation restore system, only time.

None of these three quests were good. They were badly designed, frustratingly vague, with stupid difficulty spikes without warning. World immersion? These quests shattered it completely.

So why did I persist with them? Wanted the money and XP. Needed to clear one to get to the next one. The raid attacks were the most fun part, as those were mostly far fairer than the quests. The combat with normal enemies is often fun, well, except harpies - they're always rubbish. But even in these sequences, it could so easily be so much better, yet it isn't.

Will I go back to it? Probably. I do like the world design a lot, the night time lighting is neat and I want to get my lot to the level of being vengeful gods to a world that absolutely deserves it.

 

Gonna say something controversial re: today's studio closures by Microsoft

Phil Spencer is the one who should be fired

 

How dare you suggest that a corporate moron whose business strategy amounted to mindlessly buying everything in sight should face consequences for his failures. He should be given an 8-figure raise!

 

There i fixed it.

WHERE IS MY FABLE PHIL?!?!

 

So apparently the gaming subscriptions from the two major companies (Sony and Microsoft) have stalled recently.



And there's suggestions that this could mean that price increases for those subscriptions as the companies try to recoup lost sales. Supply/demand don't work in the gaming industry, from what I gather. They wouldn't dream of actually lowering the costs to entice more people to subscribe; they'll just raise it for those who already subscribe. And they'll continue to drop popular game franchises off of their free digital catalog along the way. I'm a PS Plus Premium subscriber, but I'm definitely going to reconsider what Tier I'll be subscribing to in the future.

 

Good.

 

Good that the prices will be increasing?

 

If Microsoft really starts culling in earnest back to back with the Embracer fiasco the entire gaming budgetary middle ground is going to be non-existent for like ten plus years thanks to those two swooping in and gobbling up everyone. But some executives made money and, really, isn’t that the most important thing?

 

Yeah I'll probably just go down to basic PS Plus for online gaming and backups.