Author Topic: What are you playing?  (Read 3558818 times)

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Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34860 on: May 16, 2020, 01:45:29 PM »
Fwiw, at the end of the day the biggest issue with CS4 is it was supposed to be the ultimate ending chapter to the arc of Trails/Crossbell/CS with everything setup over 9 games being brought to a head in an epic satisfying conclusion to Western Zemuria and the mid-point of Trails/Kiseki as a whole. It should have been a really exciting paced awesome chapter with lots of major moments nonstop, like the last 30 hours of Crossbell is in Ao or the 2nd half of Sky the 2nd.

CS3 did a generally slow, but good job setting this up too.

But CS4 just completely drops the ball and is just another slow paced, repetition zzz game where nothing significant happens until the boss rush at the end, skips over lots of stuff that should be covered (which CS5-ish game will be covering some of it through doors like 3rd) and then the ending is just terrible on top of that. It also fails hard at re-using the prior characters/arcs that have been built up.

And it also has a pretty weak ass soundtrack on top of all that. Which is a shame because 3rd had some great tracks.


The new game coming this summer is "The 3rd" for CS and is supposed to fill in and flesh out stuff from CS while setting up beats for the next arc in Eastern Zemuria which will still be a few years out (and will probably start real slow at first like Sky 1). Like how the 3rd introduced Osborne and the Olivert v. Osborne rivalry, as well as 3rd introducing some of the cult stuff with Renne's backstory and more info on Oroboros. Hopefully the new game brings some of the missing major impact moments in CS to life with satisfying moments and maaaaaaaybe does some stuff to fix CS's ending which I don't even think is possible.

But more importantly since it's a fairly blank slate for Eastern Zemuria and the next arc of 10+ games over 20 years, hopefully the new game introduces some cool mysteries and setups that get you excited for the next 20 years of Kiseki. I just want my holy church land arc at some point (most likely will be the final country in the series).

tiesto

  • ルカルカ★ナイトフィーバー
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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34861 on: May 16, 2020, 05:41:49 PM »
I wanna see the far east of Zemuria as well as North Ambria, Remiferia, and that island chain south of the continent. Hoping we get places with slightly more diverse environments and architecture, as well. My favorite environment in the Trails series is the Nord Highlands, the Mongolian influenced area and lovely music really sells it and are way more interesting than euro-steampunk-traditional-rpg land.
^_^

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34862 on: May 16, 2020, 05:50:56 PM »
Well the next 5-6 years are gonna be in Calvard, but I'm gonna go ahead and assume Calvard's political issues and events outside their country will be with the countries east of them since narrative-wise there's no point focusing on Erebonia again. I mean there's already been set up for this as one of Cavlard's main political issues has to do with refugees coming from the east.

So what i'm saying is that even though we're stuck in Calvard for the foreseeable future, hopefully we'll learn more about those eastern places you mentioned in the Calvard arc.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34863 on: May 16, 2020, 05:51:51 PM »
Getting back to playing The Hex. Man, this game is so f-ing good and clever. I'm only a few character stories in but I already think it's better than Pony Island. This game, man. Everyone needs to play it.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34864 on: May 16, 2020, 10:11:53 PM »
Finally started Bory's favorite PS4 action game God of War 2018 and a couple hours in I'm not sure about it. The combat feels less fluid and varied than the originals and harder to track enemies with the zoomed in viewpoint instead of traditional fixed camera and the lack of zomg scripted sequences (outside the first battle with the stranger guy outside the house) kinda loses the fun of the originals.

When I saw the game was going RE4 style behind the back combat, I figured they'd slow the action down to closer to RE4 or Dark Souls to make up for the limited field of view, but it still seems pretty fast and chaotic with enemies out of view always attacking you and you just have to depend on these directional arrows and keep rolling around. Early on at least, it feels like the combat would be better just zooming the camera out.

It also seems way less violent than the old games. Don't think there's been any blood yet?

Hopefully as you unlock moves/abilities the combat gets better. And the non-combat stuff just seems like Tomb Raider/Uncharted.

mormapope

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34865 on: May 16, 2020, 11:06:26 PM »
Finished and solved all the fates in Return of the Obra Dinn. Definitely one of funnest and brilliant investigation games of all time. Absolutely loved every second. A masterpiece.
OH!

paprikastaude

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34866 on: May 17, 2020, 12:47:19 AM »
Finally done with Castlevania Rebirth. Very good and fresh until the end. Biggest flaw is the lack of a save system. The levels get hard and last pretty long, so you really wanna pause from time to time without starting all over - makes it unnecessarily frustrating. It's the opposite of what I remember from Contra Rebirth, which was too lenient with saving. Either way, crazy how two of the secret best Contra and Castlevania games are now only available illegally. :picard

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34867 on: May 17, 2020, 01:22:34 AM »
So I take that back on God of War. Once I got to the lake or even the witches house before it, it started picking up. At the mountain base now and enjoying it a good amount. The various rune abilities help in combat along with the upgrades to give more to do.
I really just wish the camera was zoomed back a bit more like FFVIIr, it's just too damn close, I almost get motion sickness sprinting around and it's a bit of a pain scoping out the environments for secrets with such narrow vision.

The game definitely does feel more like Tomb Raider than the old GoW games, but the mythology stuff still brings in that GoW feel.

MMaRsu

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34868 on: May 17, 2020, 06:51:32 AM »
Finished and solved all the fates in Return of the Obra Dinn. Definitely one of funnest and brilliant investigation games of all time. Absolutely loved every second. A masterpiece.

i need to play this soon
What

Nintex

  • Finish the Fight
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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34869 on: May 17, 2020, 10:22:42 AM »
Amazingly my PC plays GTA5 at 60fps completely fine without everything at the lowest possible settings :leon


Of course once I went through the 2 days of downloading and installing from EGS then installing all the Rockstar shit and setting up a RS social account and 300 capchtas, I didn't actually want to play it but it's neat that it will play and sometime I can get through some story shit and create some chaos.
Sounds like you have a normie system that you're surprised GTAV runs well.

Where's your rig breh?
🤴

MMaRsu

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34870 on: May 17, 2020, 10:59:32 AM »
"normie"

 :picard :shaking

Nintex pls
What

Nintex

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34871 on: May 17, 2020, 11:21:40 AM »
"normie"

 :picard :shaking

Nintex pls
It's a fair observation on a 6 year old game, even a vanilla Xbox One with a worn out disk drive can run GTAV.  :yeshrug
Quote
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs) / AMD Phenom 9850 Quad-Core Processor (4 CPUs) @ 2.5GHz.
Memory: 4GB.
Video Card: NVIDIA 9800 GT 1GB / AMD HD 4870 1GB (DX 10, 10.1, *11)
🤴

Rufus

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34872 on: May 17, 2020, 12:14:34 PM »
It did come out on PS360 originally.

MMaRsu

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34873 on: May 17, 2020, 12:27:03 PM »
"normie"

 :picard :shaking

Nintex pls
It's a fair observation on a 6 year old game, even a vanilla Xbox One with a worn out disk drive can run GTAV.  :yeshrug
Quote
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs) / AMD Phenom 9850 Quad-Core Processor (4 CPUs) @ 2.5GHz.
Memory: 4GB.
Video Card: NVIDIA 9800 GT 1GB / AMD HD 4870 1GB (DX 10, 10.1, *11)

Well I meant more that I find 'normie' a pretty insulting petty insult.
What

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34874 on: May 17, 2020, 12:57:24 PM »
Couple more coffee thoughts on God of War 2018

I'm not really on board with this Kratos. Like yes, GoW1-Ascension Kratos was a terrible problematic character. But those games at least from pt.2 on, were kind of comedy games where Kratos' anger was so played up and everything overexaggerated that they were funny ass games about this ridiculous angry man going around murdering the fuck out of everything including the entire greek pantheon. It was super.dumb but that also made it pretty.great.

Turning Kratos into a "real" character is just...eh, I don't really want that? This game feels like if they made a Ninja Gaiden game where you played as Old Man Ryu Hayabusa and his son in family bonding sim. Like it could be a good game and narrative but...why would I want that? These are action games about combat and flashy spectacle. I don't need real human drama in Devil May Cry or Bayonetta or God of War.

The other thought I had is that making the camera so close basically kills the ability for the epic scope battles of the old games which were sorta the main draw. You can still do epic stuff in this new game, but now you have to do it in unplayable cutscenes where you pull the camera back to show the size and scope of things. You can't do this while you're actually playing because your viewpoint is so limited. You can see this right from the start when you fight the giant wood swinging Trolls, when you're fighting them you can only even see their torso down in your view while you're slashing and rolling around them. Because the older games would have a pulled back camera, you could show giant scope epic monsters and bosses while you were actually playing and controlling the character through those sections.


So far from the original series, the new one seems to retain the puzzle action adventure aspect, some of the mythology aspect, and some of the brutal combat aspect. But it's missing the over-the-top ridiculousness (Asura's Wrath style) and epic scope.
Anyhow, excited to keep playing. Will see how my opinion changes as I go through this.

Nintex

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34875 on: May 17, 2020, 01:02:15 PM »
Nvidia GTX 650 Ti :dead
i5-3330 CPU @3ghz
That CPU is not even that terrible and most games made for the Xbox One / PS4 generation aren't CPU heavy anyway.
Assuming you have at least 8GB you could replace that GPU with a cheap GTX 1660 Ti or GTX 1060 and run pretty much everything at 1080p at 60fps or higher.
🤴

nachobro

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34876 on: May 17, 2020, 01:20:11 PM »
That CPU is not even that terrible and most games made for the Xbox One / PS4 generation aren't CPU heavy anyway.
Assuming you have at least 8GB you could replace that GPU with a cheap GTX 1660 Ti or GTX 1060 and run pretty much everything at 1080p at 60fps or higher.
rx580 would be perfect for this, cheaper card but 8gb vram and good clock speeds plus it could be transitioned to a new system pretty easily if he stayed at 1080 and would even work with vr

580s are going for so cheap right now, $144 after rebate and discount code plus 3 months of gamepass too :whew
https://www.newegg.com/msi-radeon-rx-580-rx-580-8gt-oc/p/N82E16814137479

demi

  • cooler than willco
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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34877 on: May 17, 2020, 02:14:34 PM »
Playing Yakuza 0 on Xbox still and I thought this game as like super good and amazing?

The story is slower than a snail in glue (like seriously get to the point, yes people want Majima and Kiyru dead)
The sub stories are wholly uninteresting. (Talk to guy. Guy wants X. Suddenly - bad guy, beat him up! Story done)
There's a lot of mini games which is cool if that's your thing - but I want to just beat up guys and have a cool yakuza story.
fat

Mr Gilhaney

  • Gay and suicidal
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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34878 on: May 17, 2020, 03:13:38 PM »
Playing Yakuza 0 on Xbox still and I thought this game as like super good and amazing?

The story is slower than a snail in glue (like seriously get to the point, yes people want Majima and Kiyru dead)
The sub stories are wholly uninteresting. (Talk to guy. Guy wants X. Suddenly - bad guy, beat him up! Story done)
There's a lot of mini games which is cool if that's your thing - but I want to just beat up guys and have a cool yakuza story.

maybe u just have shit taste m8

demi

  • cooler than willco
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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34879 on: May 17, 2020, 03:42:57 PM »
A compelling argument
fat

mormapope

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34880 on: May 17, 2020, 03:43:07 PM »
Playing Yakuza 0 on Xbox still and I thought this game as like super good and amazing?

The story is slower than a snail in glue (like seriously get to the point, yes people want Majima and Kiyru dead)
The sub stories are wholly uninteresting. (Talk to guy. Guy wants X. Suddenly - bad guy, beat him up! Story done)
There's a lot of mini games which is cool if that's your thing - but I want to just beat up guys and have a cool yakuza story.

This was my issue and stopped playing. I was fine with the glue pacing at the start, assuming it was only going to be like that for the intro. But it's the entire game.

OH!

Nintex

  • Finish the Fight
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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34881 on: May 17, 2020, 04:55:12 PM »
That CPU is not even that terrible and most games made for the Xbox One / PS4 generation aren't CPU heavy anyway.
Assuming you have at least 8GB you could replace that GPU with a cheap GTX 1660 Ti or GTX 1060 and run pretty much everything at 1080p at 60fps or higher.
rx580 would be perfect for this, cheaper card but 8gb vram and good clock speeds plus it could be transitioned to a new system pretty easily if he stayed at 1080 and would even work with vr

580s are going for so cheap right now, $144 after rebate and discount code plus 3 months of gamepass too :whew
https://www.newegg.com/msi-radeon-rx-580-rx-580-8gt-oc/p/N82E16814137479
yeah something like that would also work. There's also a card that AMD re-branded like 4 times but I don't quite recall the latest edition  :doge
🤴

Svejk

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34882 on: May 17, 2020, 08:43:43 PM »
Playing Yakuza 0 on Xbox still and I thought this game as like super good and amazing?

The story is slower than a snail in glue (like seriously get to the point, yes people want Majima and Kiyru dead)
The sub stories are wholly uninteresting. (Talk to guy. Guy wants X. Suddenly - bad guy, beat him up! Story done)
There's a lot of mini games which is cool if that's your thing - but I want to just beat up guys and have a cool yakuza story.

This was my issue and stopped playing. I was fine with the glue pacing at the start, assuming it was only going to be like that for the intro. But it's the entire game.
Reading makes me tired nowadays...  Plus I tend to have a few dranks while weekend gaming... Therefore reading the constant subtitles in this game snoozes the shit out if me.. fun quirks and all..  Maybe someday it'll click for me...

Great Rumbler

  • Dab on the sinners
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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34883 on: May 17, 2020, 09:43:37 PM »
Been playing Greedfall, the latest RPG from my favorite Eurojank developer. It's the best game from them so far; the most competent, too. Feels like they've finally got to the point where their talents as a developer, and funding, is on a similar level as their ambition. You can still tell that they didn't have a ton of money here, but they got enough to make a fleshed out WRPG with lots of content. Not a lot of bugs or glitches either from what I've seen, which is always nice.

So yeah, it's fun. I like it.
dog

MMaRsu

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34884 on: May 17, 2020, 11:05:26 PM »
Playing Yakuza 0 on Xbox still and I thought this game as like super good and amazing?

The story is slower than a snail in glue (like seriously get to the point, yes people want Majima and Kiyru dead)
The sub stories are wholly uninteresting. (Talk to guy. Guy wants X. Suddenly - bad guy, beat him up! Story done)
There's a lot of mini games which is cool if that's your thing - but I want to just beat up guys and have a cool yakuza story.

No those games are boring
What

MMaRsu

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34885 on: May 17, 2020, 11:05:52 PM »
If I upgrade graphics cards, I'd also need to upgrade monitors, I also need to get a new hard drive, and I'd need to upgrade to Win 10 :stahp

lmao nothing wrong with win10 whats wrong is ur old ass shit pc
What

nachobro

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34886 on: May 17, 2020, 11:14:15 PM »
If I upgrade graphics cards, I'd also need to upgrade monitors, I also need to get a new hard drive, and I'd need to upgrade to Win 10 :stahp
what's up with your monitor?

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34887 on: May 18, 2020, 12:03:00 AM »
Never missed Borys more than playing God of War and thinking of all his posts on it. He better come back so I can talk about some of these battles with him.

Also, I'm at the heart of the mountain after finishing Alfheim, so uh, are there no other weapons in this God of War? The Axe + Shield & Hand combat is pretty good with a varied moveset, but usually action games have multiple weapons and the past GoW games totally did. I kind of feel though if they haven't given me one yet, it's unlikely there is gonna be any. Then again I haven't fought any big epic bosses that would leave a weapon yet.

The dark elves will all their stupid fucking ground bomb spam & flying behind you were pretty annoying. Otherwise game is good. Combat is pretty intense like I remember the old GoWs being at a times.

demi

  • cooler than willco
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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34888 on: May 18, 2020, 01:32:59 AM »
There are more weapons. Do u always do these early hot takes or is this a quarantine thing

Also nobody actually uses all the silly other weapons in God of War games and this game does the smart choice and focuses on the Axe
« Last Edit: May 18, 2020, 02:20:51 AM by demi »
fat

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34889 on: May 18, 2020, 02:40:42 AM »
I never liked the chains in the old GoW games and usually used something else like the fists.

Also it feels like I'm a decent ways in already? Maybe 1/3rd through or something (I read main story is like 20 hours and I've got to be at least 6+ hours at this point)? So it's kinda weird that there's still no weapons besides the axe. I beat the dragon, got to the top of the mountain, lowered the ocean more and started doing some side stuff before going to get the magic chisel to get to Jotunheim.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34890 on: May 18, 2020, 02:41:49 AM »
Anyhow, the kid/dad banter is growing on me. Pretty funny when the kid griefs Kratos.

Mr Gilhaney

  • Gay and suicidal
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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34891 on: May 18, 2020, 07:09:53 AM »
i only got like 5 hours into it and had to stop. hated that dad son shit so much. hated that they had to make kratos a fucking dad, and his kid this annoying little shit cunt. ugh.

nachobro

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34892 on: May 18, 2020, 08:46:23 PM »
my man stro back in the pc game :jeb

kingv

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34893 on: May 18, 2020, 09:25:47 PM »
I never liked the chains in the old GoW games and usually used something else like the fists.

Also it feels like I'm a decent ways in already? Maybe 1/3rd through or something (I read main story is like 20 hours and I've got to be at least 6+ hours at this point)? So it's kinda weird that there's still no weapons besides the axe. I beat the dragon, got to the top of the mountain, lowered the ocean more and started doing some side stuff before going to get the magic chisel to get to Jotunheim.

I think it’s probably longer than 20 hours, more like 30.

Imo the game is too long and has a bunch of padding. I was ready for it to end about 7 hours before it did.

MMaRsu

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34894 on: May 18, 2020, 10:14:33 PM »
Bepbo talking up Slay the Spire made me finally install that pirated version I had on my disk since forever

Game was so good I instantly bought it the day after on Steam

Game is super addicting lmao
What

bluemax

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34895 on: May 18, 2020, 11:54:27 PM »
I never liked the chains in the old GoW games and usually used something else like the fists.

Also it feels like I'm a decent ways in already? Maybe 1/3rd through or something (I read main story is like 20 hours and I've got to be at least 6+ hours at this point)? So it's kinda weird that there's still no weapons besides the axe. I beat the dragon, got to the top of the mountain, lowered the ocean more and started doing some side stuff before going to get the magic chisel to get to Jotunheim.

I think it’s probably longer than 20 hours, more like 30.

Imo the game is too long and has a bunch of padding. I was ready for it to end about 7 hours before it did.

Depends on playstyle but apparently 20-30 hours is normal.
NO

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34896 on: May 19, 2020, 02:29:56 AM »
Yeah I was going by how long to beat which says 20 hour story, 30 hours if you do all the sidequests.

Spent tonight's session exploring the lake doing sidequests and exploring all the various hidden optional areas. It's a pretty cool game, but it does feel kinda a weird game, like not a 10/10 GoTY kind game that it got all the awards it did (I'm not finding it better than RDR2 so far and it beat RDR2 in most awards in 2018), but it's a pretty good weird 8/10 kinda game so far for me.

It almost feels like a Skyrim-lite with better combat/writing. It's more an arpg than action game for sure and even with all these games having "rpg" elements these days, this is way beyond that and actually feels like a goddamn world map, quests, loot, leveling rpg.

Which is bizarre because a God of War rpg is strange direction for the franchise, but I guess they wanted it to feel fresh.

Like Bethesda games, the game has a loot problem and a bit of a level scaling problem. There's so.much.fucking.loot in this game because there's a billion little puzzles everywhere and they want to reward the player but actually giving you something when you solve them. The problem is with so much loot, they can't really make most of the loot good and substantial, so solving all these puzzles and optional combat scenarios only to get a whole bunch of very minor useful loot is...eh, a lot less satisfying.

And the leveling/power system is dumb. I get why they did it so they can give players freedom to go anywhere but have higher level enemies be road blocks like an 8-bit rpg when you go to an area early. But finding some area and walking in and then getting one-shotted and sitting through reloading is fucking annoying. Those floating orbs that you can open up and make a high level enemy appear? Well since they don't tell you what level the enemy is going to be you just have to pull it, find out and probably die and then reload. Why don't they just put a level indicator on those?

The worst is when you're doing side stuff and you're not sure if you're the right level to "supposed to be doing this now" and the first group of enemies you fight is your level or below and it seems fine and then a few sections into an optional area you get some enemy that's purple and one-shots you and it's dumb.

The whole levels system is just stupid and the game would've been better off without it even if it meant the power creep would make enemies too easy as you leveled. Maybe they should have just got rid of player stats all together and treated it like a character action game where you get new moves and you can power up a good deal, but your base stats stay the same.

Anyhow, still a cool game. Gonna take another session or so just to finish exploring the lake and all sidequests through this point before getting back to the story. Doing all the side stuff got me a shit ton of XP and money so I pretty much was able to buy almost all the combat skills and get the current (lvl.4) gear equip which is a nice power upgrade. The music in the game is really good btw.

I'm assuming there's going to be a (New) God of War 2 in a couple years? So hopefully they can iron some of this stuff out and improve on this arpg formula.

BIONIC

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34897 on: May 19, 2020, 07:12:51 AM »
Hopefully they make the next one fun

Margs

Don Rumata

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34898 on: May 19, 2020, 01:11:29 PM »
Quote
It almost feels like a Skyrim-lite
:thinking
I mean aside from both having Norse aesthetic/inspiration, i really don't see it.
GoW is just a very constrained Metroidvania, or i guess Souls-like since you unlock keys more than abilities, to open up new areas.
They're popular now, after Souls made them into a big thing again, Control, Jedi Fallen Order, even Uncharted Lost Legacy, to a degree.
Some are more traditionally metroidvania than others, but they follow that basic formula.
They can strike a good balance between their cinematic story, and a better sense of exploration than traditional corridor shooters (i think Order 1886 killed that genre for a while).

Nintex

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Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34899 on: May 19, 2020, 03:03:02 PM »
Said fuck it and upgraded today:



(Image removed from quote.)


I was given $500 out of the blue a few weeks ago so fuck it, midas swell treat myself for once

Welcome back to the fight

 :salute
🤴

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34900 on: May 19, 2020, 03:13:08 PM »
Quote
It almost feels like a Skyrim-lite
:thinking
I mean aside from both having Norse aesthetic/inspiration, i really don't see it.
GoW is just a very constrained Metroidvania, or i guess Souls-like since you unlock keys more than abilities, to open up new areas.
They're popular now, after Souls made them into a big thing again, Control, Jedi Fallen Order, even Uncharted Lost Legacy, to a degree.
Some are more traditionally metroidvania than others, but they follow that basic formula.
They can strike a good balance between their cinematic story, and a better sense of exploration than traditional corridor shooters (i think Order 1886 killed that genre for a while).

Yeah, a few people think I'm crazy about this.

But it really feels like an wrpg-lite with good combat and smaller world. It's not even the metroidvania power up accessing new areas kind of way, because yeah if that was it I'd call it more constrained metroidvania.

I also don't think this game feels souls at all despite what the missing Borys said. Yeah picking up little glowing sphere items off soldier corpses and breaking barrels gives a little souls-feel, but otherwise? Nah.

It's the stats, equipment, leveling, loot system with optional dungeons that are lower effort caves and mines and stuff that give me that Bethesda feel.


I think the closest game in the action games with rpg hybrid elements would be AC Origins/Odyssey, but I think God of War is even more an rpg than those games. Those games have leveling and enemy levels and loot, but do they have attack/magic/defense/magic defense/status buff defense/all kinds of status buffs where you're buying gear, finding gear, upgrading gear, slotting gear to slightly increase those various stats to different builds? And switching around your runes*coughcoughmateria* to give you new moves and abilities? The rpg customization in God of War feels far deeper than AC Origins/Odyssey. Yes, God of War is less open than a full open world, but it feels like a more linear constrained action wrpg way to me.

Also while I'm liking the game, I think it really fails to standout. It got so overhyped/reviewed/awarded in 2018, but these days everyone I talk to about the game who beat it in 2018 says they can barely remember the combat, don't remember the loot/leveling/stats much at all, and basically just remember "the couple of big amazing boss fights" and that "there wasn't much of a story despite it being super long and it's basically just a prologue game #1". I dunno, that doesn't sound like the GoTY 2018 title that should've beat stuff like RDR2, Monster Hunter World, etc...that year. Playing RDR2 this year, it has its own problems, but it was definitely an amazing standout game that felt defining with its world.

Even the combat, I'm reading lots of old threads on the combat from 2018 when I try to figure out a good way of dealing with certain enemies like the annoying as fuck teleporting witch revenants that I shoot arrows to stun and then get a few hits and then the disappear and fights take a while against these weak annoying enemies, and even in 2018 basically everyone says revenant enemies suck and are poor design, that the game lacks enemy variety, combat weapon variety, etc.., etc... and for whatever good the combat brought, it was quickly overshadowed by DMCV's combat the next year.

So basically they spent all these years/budget rebooting GoW for a game that has forgettable combat, forgettable story, and forgettable progression. Just seems like a step back from the big deal games GoW1/2 were at the time. Right now where I'm at maybe halfway? The game feels at best around the quality of Ascension and maybe better than the PSP game by Ready at Dawn. Definitely isn't bringing that feeling of the first two games and anything would be better than GoWIII which was pretty shit.

Given that the game is already 2 years old, I'm gonna assume the sequel is only another 1-2 years out in year 1-2 PS5 life. I'm hoping that this reboot game was a test of ideas for a new concept and the 2nd game will refine them in an Assassin's Creed 1 -> 2 kind of way. Plus I want more god fights, my vague old memory of GoW2 (also by Barlog and why I thought he must be some amazing game designer) is that it's a game where you basically go around beating the shit out of god after god after god in epic cool fights and getting megaman style powerups from each god you killed. I hope the second game is less going around exploring and talking and fighting trolls and dragons and stuff and more "let's go fuck up gods and steal their powers" because that is the essence of God of War franchise to me.

I know, I know I should finish this first before jumping to conclusions, but talking to duckroll he basically said not to expect much from the rest of the game outside a couple more cool boss fights, so I'm expecting more of this fun, but nothing amazing, and probably too long for its own good in how repetitive it is, 8/10 kind of game for the rest.

kingv

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34901 on: May 19, 2020, 05:05:21 PM »
Sony exclusives, much like Nintendo exclusive, get overpraised a ton. Whether they deserve the hype or not.

Definitely this. Naughty Dog especially. Their games have a ton of polish, and the story is usually well-done, if often derivative, but the games themselves are usually just “ok”.

The story is usually not good enough or quirky enough for me to elevate them based on that alone, and typically I would not play the game if it weren’t for the story.

The one Sony Exclusive I have really really liked was Spider-man, but hard for me to separate how much of that is “I just really like Spider-man games in general, even the bad ones” and “it’s a really great game”. It’s definitely the best Spider-Man game, but most spider-man games are bad, so, it’s not really a high bar to clear.


Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34902 on: May 19, 2020, 05:44:51 PM »
Eh, I think Sony's 1st party stuff is just not for everyone. Some people like certain games, some people like other games. I really like all of Naughty Dog's stuff and have zero issue with their hype.

Anyhow, after like a 5 hour+ detour of doing sidequests/exploring optional areas in God of War, I think I'm just getting burnt out on the C-grade optional stuff. I was enjoying the main story until I started doing this kind of stuff and the sidequest rewards are usually underleveled and minor and often useless and just boring caves/mines repetitive areas with battle after battle. It's not terrible material, but it's definitely filler to pad the game out instead of being an exciting adventure.

I think even though I usually do everything in games, I'm just gonna stick to the main story from this point. If I'm really loving it at the endgame I'll go around clearing up side stuff, but otherwise I think I'm ok with skipping it all and just seeing the story through and moving on to the next game. If I end up too underpowered because I didn't do all the side stuff at the end I'll just lower the difficulty, but I think I'm fine since I've maxed out the kids skill tree and most of the axe tree.

Don Rumata

  • Hard To Be A John
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34903 on: May 19, 2020, 07:09:17 PM »
Sony exclusives, much like Nintendo exclusive, get overpraised a ton. Whether they deserve the hype or not.

Definitely this. Naughty Dog especially. Their games have a ton of polish, and the story is usually well-done, if often derivative, but the games themselves are usually just “ok”.

The story is usually not good enough or quirky enough for me to elevate them based on that alone, and typically I would not play the game if it weren’t for the story.

The one Sony Exclusive I have really really liked was Spider-man, but hard for me to separate how much of that is “I just really like Spider-man games in general, even the bad ones” and “it’s a really great game”. It’s definitely the best Spider-Man game, but most spider-man games are bad, so, it’s not really a high bar to clear.
They lifted 60% of their design ideas from Spiderman 2 tho.
I liked Spiderman too, but it was basically Spiderman 2 done properly with an original story and polish.
At least they put a bit of a twist on the Batman combat.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34904 on: May 19, 2020, 07:11:31 PM »
Yeah, I'm gonna play Spider-Man pretty soon, so since everyone seems to have liked it I'm hoping it's more enjoyable than GoW. Next 4 games in my backlog I'm planning on tackling are DMCV, Spider-Man and FFXV Complete Edition.

Thinking of maybe also playing Horizon since that's one of the only other big 1st party games I never played, but I'm just so tired of mediocre open-world games like GoW I don't know if I have it in me.

I also am feeling a bit of hankering to get back to Days Gone. For all the shit people give it, I actually enjoyed the first hour or two I played outside the controls being kinda laggy. If an open-world game is compelling & open-ended in gameplay design I'm down.

Nintex

  • Finish the Fight
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34905 on: May 19, 2020, 07:38:18 PM »
Shit brahs I have 2 RAM slots open and about $60 in Amazon credits, midas swell upgrade all the way :jeb

Gonna go with 24 gigs :jeb
:rejoice
🤴

Don Rumata

  • Hard To Be A John
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34906 on: May 19, 2020, 08:00:16 PM »
I legitimately liked Horizon and Spider-Man quite a bit, but they're very "general" for lack of a better term.

I don't like GoW2018 but I can't say I have much to say on it aside from I share bebpo's bewilderment at how people called it "groundbreaking" and "revolutionary" when it came off to me as a modernization steeped in almost decade long popular design trends, for better or worse. I can see how people could love it and why they would, but gamers have this tendency to pretend everything they like has to be wholly original and unheard of before it's release which is insane. That's not GoW2018's fault, it just so happens to be the big sony first party game to fill the list for fanboys as TLOU2 and GOT took a while to come out.
I didn't like Horizon (couldn't even finish it) but the combat felt kind of unique.
I mean on the surface it's just a 3rd person action shooter, granted, but the movement + enemies attack patterns, make it kind of unique.
It was the best feature of that game, too bad for the lame stealth, boring story, pointless crafting and shitty map design.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34907 on: May 19, 2020, 08:06:06 PM »
One of my casual friends has only beat/enjoyed like 5 games this generation and Horizon was one of them.
But otoh, another friend who is a big Guerrilla Games fan got bored and dropped it midway. So idk.

Positive Touch

  • Woo Papa
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34908 on: May 19, 2020, 08:20:54 PM »
i liked horizon a lot more than i thought i would. the combat is kinda like an action rpg in that you have to hit weak points with specific types of weapon properties and there element damage and whatnot. ended up having a lot of exciting moments. a lot of the rest of the game is pretty janky, but overall it was fun enough that i decided to plat the whole thing.
pcp

kingv

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34909 on: May 19, 2020, 08:31:04 PM »
Sony exclusives, much like Nintendo exclusive, get overpraised a ton. Whether they deserve the hype or not.

Definitely this. Naughty Dog especially. Their games have a ton of polish, and the story is usually well-done, if often derivative, but the games themselves are usually just “ok”.

The story is usually not good enough or quirky enough for me to elevate them based on that alone, and typically I would not play the game if it weren’t for the story.

The one Sony Exclusive I have really really liked was Spider-man, but hard for me to separate how much of that is “I just really like Spider-man games in general, even the bad ones” and “it’s a really great game”. It’s definitely the best Spider-Man game, but most spider-man games are bad, so, it’s not really a high bar to clear.
They lifted 60% of their design ideas from Spiderman 2 tho.
I liked Spiderman too, but it was basically Spiderman 2 done properly with an original story and polish.
At least they put a bit of a twist on the Batman combat.

IMO the web swinging in Spider-man 2 was still a bit better. I really wanted it to feel faster in the Insomniac one. Probably the weakest point of it.

Don Rumata

  • Hard To Be A John
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34910 on: May 19, 2020, 09:27:01 PM »
Sony exclusives, much like Nintendo exclusive, get overpraised a ton. Whether they deserve the hype or not.

Definitely this. Naughty Dog especially. Their games have a ton of polish, and the story is usually well-done, if often derivative, but the games themselves are usually just “ok”.

The story is usually not good enough or quirky enough for me to elevate them based on that alone, and typically I would not play the game if it weren’t for the story.

The one Sony Exclusive I have really really liked was Spider-man, but hard for me to separate how much of that is “I just really like Spider-man games in general, even the bad ones” and “it’s a really great game”. It’s definitely the best Spider-Man game, but most spider-man games are bad, so, it’s not really a high bar to clear.
They lifted 60% of their design ideas from Spiderman 2 tho.
I liked Spiderman too, but it was basically Spiderman 2 done properly with an original story and polish.
At least they put a bit of a twist on the Batman combat.

IMO the web swinging in Spider-man 2 was still a bit better. I really wanted it to feel faster in the Insomniac one. Probably the weakest point of it.
Maybe it really was the power of the SSD, missing from this one.  :-*

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34911 on: May 19, 2020, 10:10:02 PM »
Spidermayne is a blatant Arkham rip off (I mean, so were the ASM tie in games) even down to the Scarecrow mind fuck poison world crumbling stuff and all the predator stealth sections that are so Spidermanny. It was fun, but I don't now why or how it came to be a console exclusive or why it was treated like anything above a fun licensed game.

I really liked some of the last gen Spider-Man games.

Shattered Dimensions was a heck of a lot of fun and some creative stuff with the black & white Noir stealth levels and playable 2099 was great.
That DS one that was a metroidvania was pretty good too.

The Sceneman

  • Did my wife send you?
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34912 on: May 20, 2020, 03:49:34 AM »
Ace Combat 7 progress:
- game complete on easy
- game complete on normal
- game 50% complete on hard
- all named enemy aces shot down
- all 10 multiplayer medals achieved
- all multiplayer achievements unlocked
- 2/3 DLC missions complete (which are fucking awesome btw)

whats left:
- finish game on hard (pretty simple with all the best planes/parts)
- S rank each level on ace (some stages will be annoying but im using a good guide and hard mode as a test run for whats required)
- finish the DLC
- buy all the shit in the store
- replay DLC/whatever a bunch to rack up 40,000,000MRP and 76,000 km flown

Incredible game and im not even close to being bored of it.


Also been playing Evil Within 2 a bit - they really changed things with this one, its much less an action game and very very survival focused. The zombies FUCK YOU UP so you either gotta stealth em, run away, or if you really have to; shoot em in the legs and stomp on their heads. Its very well made and the graphics are great, but I cant say I enjoy it as much as the first game. Havent really spent the time to get deep into yet though. AC7 is #1
#1

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34913 on: May 20, 2020, 04:20:03 AM »
God of War - Pretty much played all evening/night. After a certain part the main story was pretty hard to put down. Think I'm getting nearer to the end. I really like the story in the 2nd half and music overall. It's almost as if it's a better cinematic adventure movie than it is a videogame. Some of the locations in the 2nd half are more those fantastical places I'd expect out of a GoW game; climbing around the giant's hammer, Tyr's palace with all the blue/fire colors and traps; fighting demi-gods and stuff; etc...The combat is ok, I got the blades and with 2 weapons and both their 2 skill attacks on cooldown so you can switch back and forth while cooling down + rage the combat is a lot more fun and doable. Plus the blades are just a lot more fun to use for crowd control.

Beat my first Valkyrie fight, was alright but the combat is just sluggish in a way that doesn't feel as good as a character action game at the high end. Still with my moveset now and being lvl.5 I feel capable to do the fights. Plus AT SOME POINT I WILL FINALLY UNLOCK FULL FAST TRAVEL (I like, I mean I don't like, how it gives you full fast travel and then is like "WHOOPS ALL BROKEN" while you're in narrative land).

The story turn of the kid being a little fucking brat punk is irksome, especially since the narrative writing has been really good, but kids are dumb like that so it's not all that unrealistic and I'll put up with it until the story gets where it's going.

I'm guessing if I start early on in the evening tomorrow I'll finish the main story tomorrow. Then will figure out how much of the side stuff I wanna do.


Also I just wanna add that the gameplay balance being MMO-based level scaling is gross and stupid. Level means everything, fuck all your stats, most of your strategy, etc... it's all about your level between 1-8 and the enemy level. If you're 1 level higher it's a cakewalk, if you're 2-3 levels below you get one-shotted. Because level scaling beats everything, it makes more sense to load up your gear and slots with the highest level stuff you have or can buy/upgrade and just use whatever if it'll get you to the next level because that will make a hell of a lot more difference than the individual stats. This is dumb and really has no place in this game. It's the one thing I hope they remove from the sequel, but I have a feeling it's here to stay for the new series. At least when I hit a certain level in this game nothing will be able to be more than 2 levels higher than me and I can just do anything. I figure once I hit lvl.6 I'll be there which will be good for wrapping up stuff.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34914 on: May 21, 2020, 02:46:20 AM »
Uh, finished God of War, yeah wtf. Haven't seen an AAA game this uneven since jank ass ps2 titles.

There are sections/times/areas when the game is 9/10 great AAA stuff, then there are sections and mini-games and all kinds of shit that is like 4/10 crap. Like the main story is mostly good but kinda falls apart in the end because it was probably rushed and ran out of time. But everything optional in the game, which is like 50% of the fucking game is boring stuff that doesn't respect the player's time at all. I mean even small stuff like the chisel doors, that mini-game is dumb and not fun and just a short time waster to open doors. Feels like early gen PS jank mini-games, not like a modern videogame.

I was enjoying the plot a lot and couldn't put it down for about 5-7 hours in the 2nd half and then before the end stuff I went and did the optional fire/poison gas realms and instead of being cool realms they're dumb challenge arena and rogue-mini game. So I start doing the challenge arena and then it's like "survive for 5 mins" and a few minutes in I realize 5 mins is a long time. Then there is "fight 100 enemies" and that takes fucking forever and it's not like it's challenging because most of the enemies are grunts. It's just padded to waste your time. Then Atreus says "oh there's 6 of these trial swords" and I'm just like are you fucking kidding me? What 2 hours of arena to get some power up to gain 1 level on your axe? So I bailed. All the Valkyrie stuff is the same, all the various collect-a-thon items on the maps, it's all just time-wasting stuff.

Having spent like 5 hours doing just optional side stuff and trying to find every secret chest/lore marker/raven in all the main story elements, my clear % was 55%.

I liked the story though as mentioned feels like it falls flat at the very end and should've been way more interesting/satisfying. Why didn't Thor/Odin come at you once the rune that keeps you hidden wears off? Baldur was kinda developed but then amounts to nothing in the end I didn't even realize the final boss fight was the final boss. And before that you go into the world serpent and it's a bunch of rowing and then...1 puzzle and you're done? That's the entire interior of the world serpent area? Stuff had to have gotten cut. The last 90 mins of the game felt written by someone else than the rest of the game.

There were way too many puzzles. Just too.many.damn.puzzles. Especially all those norn chests with the 3 runes. And as I said I bunch the loot mostly sucked and made the reward for the time to do them not worth it. Also a lot of the puzzles were...kinda janky and not that well designed. That drowning sun/moon/wolves puzzle is way too tight considering it requires you to figure out 7 moves and you die in like 10 moves. Too much axe throwing.

Combat was good, but not great. Definitely repetitive. The rune attacks were basically the best part.

In the end I sorta liked the game, but I'd give it a 7/10 because of how flat it falls in the last 90 mins. If GoWIII hadn't completely shit the bed story-wise, I'd say 2018 GoW is the weakest entry in the series, but it's probably still better than that.

I'd also say out of Sony's 1st party AAA franchises on PS4 this is probably their weakest. It also lowers my opinion of Barlog as a director for sure. This just feels like a game that didn't have solid constant direction of what it wanted to be and was kinda throwing stuff on the wall and seeing what works.

idk, outside the cinematic movie stuff, it almost feels like a videogame made by people who haven't made a video game in a decade and are still stuck in early 2000s game design concepts.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34915 on: May 21, 2020, 02:51:48 AM »
Also I wanna add that for a game about mythology of having multiple realms, they completely waste of all them outside Midgard and maybe Hel is alright. Like most are one room or challenge arenas and whatever when they could've been interesting places to visit with npcs and worlds to explore and some variety. Feels like they were very budget/time restricted so they did these 1 area realms. Would've been better to have fewer realms that were more expanded and save the other realms for sequels.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34916 on: May 21, 2020, 02:59:48 AM »
There's also a whole lot of plot holes/things left unfinished narrative for such a narrative-focused game. Like the whole game there's all this lore about something causing great disturbance in the force that's causing all the undead to rise in midgard someone must have done something major to tinker with the balance in the force, but...that's just left like that in the end. Seemed like something pretty related to this one game and its events so weird they didn't even explain what was causing what's going on in the game. Just really messy narrative overall unless some of this optional stuff like the valkyries and what not explain some things.

BIONIC

  • Virgo. Live Music. The Office. Tacos. Fur mom. True crime junkie. INTJ.
  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34917 on: May 21, 2020, 03:15:51 AM »
Alternating between Kingdom Hearts 2 and Final Fantasy XII.

KH2 is way more fun  :doge

spoiler (click to show/hide)
And has a better story  :doge
[close]
Margs

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34918 on: May 21, 2020, 04:23:49 AM »
Spent the last hour reading God of War impressions threads from 2018. While some people are like "every game has flaws, but this is one of the best games ever", I'm finding the majority of people were complaining about the same things, bad camera, stupid leveling/gear/stats system, way too many treasure chests with nothing worthwhile, bad pacing, lack of epic boss fights, lack of boss fights in general, lack of enemy variety, optional realms basically nothing but some half-assed arenas, lack of NPCs, story & combat take a while to get going, lack of proper climax to the story in the last 90 mins, etc... with most people saying it's around an 8/10 to them. Seems more like it was a weird media/press thing of pushing the 9s/10s so much and hyping it like it was genre defining.

Bebpo

  • Senior Member
Re: What are you playing?
« Reply #34919 on: May 21, 2020, 04:38:51 AM »
Also, last thought for the night on God of War is I saw someone comment that “well if you wanted 4 boss fights instead of 3, that’s another 5 million dollars the budget needs” and it triggered me in a this is what is wrong with some devs/pubs game design.

From an enjoyable gameplay experience, I’d rather have a game that looks like Dark Souls 3/Bloodborne and has a ton of unique areas, bosses, enemies, weapons than a game that has a bit nicer graphics but because of budget can only afford to have 5 enemies that are color swapped, have entire realms be just one big temple/building and only have 3 bosses.

Games like Dark Souls 3 still look really good. I will play DMCV soon, but I would expect that it will have more variety than GoW and DMCV looks really good.

There has to be a point where you sacrifice detail a little to get more content so you can make a complete satisfying game. Or the publisher needs to fund you enough to have both. I’ve seen too many games where the strive for top tier graphics budget restrains the game to not feel satisfying despite the games having 50x the budget of smaller games that can feel complete.

FFVIIr definitely had some budget constraints, and was certainly lower budget than GoW, yet FFVIIr still felt pretty complete with a ton of enemies, bosses, good amount of areas/characters, combat abilities, etc...it also looked top notch AAA as well and probably took fewer years to make than GoW as well with a smaller team. The insane budget issues of A4 games needs to go.