The Video Game Thread

[The Swanton825]

7 hours ago, Fleisch said:

I'm curious, when do you consider a game complete? Do you have to get every trophy/achievement or are you like me, once the main story is done, the game is complete. I tend not to go back to "mop up" missed achievements because although it is nice getting the little pop up, it really isn't what gaming is about for me.

I consider a game complete when I'm tired of playing it. It's only the really short or seriously fantastic games I adore to death that I'll go back and get every achievement.

 

4 hours ago, MidKnightDreary said:

My current rotation: Tarkov, Sea of Thieves. That's about it. Thinking about BG3, but I guess I shouldn't get into that too much or I'll never see my wife again.

Can confirm that about BG3. I told myself I'd just play through the opening bit on the Nautiloid and then before I knew it, almost four hours had passed.

[Jaysin]

I spent a couple days grinding with my Eevee, that sounds wrong, but yeah, it took forever to get his friendship level high enough to evolve him into Umbreon. SoulSilver is such a satisfying experience. Probably the best Pokemon experience I've ever had since my original playthrough of Pokemon Red. 

[The Swanton825]

So, I try not to obnoxiously shill my own stuff, but I figured that since this one is thanks to a recommendation I got waaaaaay back in the day on these forums I'd go ahead and mention it. I've been making videos on old video games I enjoy and my latest is on an obscure FPS called Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri.

 

Edited August 7, 2023 by The Swanton825

[The Swanton825]

I can now confidently state that Baldur's Gate III is almost certainly my game of the year. Baldur's Gate II, as well as the Throne of Bhaal expansion, is top shelf CRPG greatness and second only to Planescape: Torment among D&D games. Reaching even close to that quality is a tall order for anyone (judging by the mixed response to Pillars of Eternity, even the originally planned Baldur's Gate III, which PoE recycled many ideas from, would have struggled to match up), but Larian managed to climb that mountain and deliver! It'll probably take several playthroughs before I can decide if I would say it surpasses BG2's heights, just getting to that point is praise enough.

Now if we could get people to stop turning this great game into the centerpiece of a culture war regarding AAA gaming. It didn't work with Witcher 3 and it helped give CDPR such a massive ego that we got Cyberpunk released in that dumpster fire of a launch state because the higher-ups were convinced they could do no wrong. I really don't want to see that happen with Larian.

[Blackman]

So far it has indeed been a fine experience, though I've lost my edge and had to put difficulty down to easy. So far the fans love them so much that they got away with releasing a hotfix that somehow breaks saves, or something. I'll wait a while before playing more.

17 hours ago, The Swanton825 said:

I really don't want to see that happen with Larian.

It didn't happen, right? They did it right and went for the early access, to appease the impatient and make sure to get such a complicated game right.

[The Swanton825]

2 hours ago, Blackman said:

It didn't happen, right? They did it right and went for the early access, to appease the impatient and make sure to get such a complicated game right.

I meant that I'm worried that will happen with their next game because everyone's doing that "THIS WILL CHANGE AAA GAMING FOREVER" bit that they did when The Witcher 3 came out. But then again, I was worried they would get big egos after Original Sin 2 and then they made BG3.

[Jaysin]

Just beat the Elite Four and Champion Lance in Pokemon SoulSilver and holy moly that was stressful. Lance had three Dragonites. Like how is that remotely fair?

[Fleisch]

Knocked off Mafia and Mafia II Definitive editions from my "still yet to complete" list. I'd forgotten how much fun they were. The next few months are going to be taken up with Starfield (providing its any good) and then I'll go back to backlog clearing.

EDIT: So Starfield sucks! My God this game is boring and just pure garbage. Thankfully I got it on Gamepass but I actually can't describe how absolutely crap this game is given the years put into it. There is nothing groundbreaking here. Spaceflight? No Man Sky does it better. Space dog fights? No Man Sky does it better. Ground combat? Mass Effect does it better. There is nothing in this game that Bethesda have added that is genre defining or even just good. The only thing this has going for it is the voice acting but that's like putting lipstick on a hagfish.

[The Swanton825]

On 8/31/2023 at 9:15 PM, Fleisch said:

EDIT: So Starfield sucks! My God this game is boring and just pure garbage. Thankfully I got it on Gamepass but I actually can't describe how absolutely crap this game is given the years put into it. There is nothing groundbreaking here. Spaceflight? No Man Sky does it better. Space dog fights? No Man Sky does it better. Ground combat? Mass Effect does it better. There is nothing in this game that Bethesda have added that is genre defining or even just good. The only thing this has going for it is the voice acting but that's like putting lipstick on a hagfish.

I really don't understand how Bethesda still has this kind of mystique with people. When was the last time Bethesda did anything groundbreaking? The settlement stuff in Fallout 4 was a mod for Fallout 3, complete with the exact same mechanics! I'm pretty sure Bethesda never even credited the original modder for the concept. Skyrim's "radiant quests" are just a renaming of the procedurally generated quests in Arena and Daggerfall. Oblivion managed to make persuasion into the most mind-numbing tedium in the history of gaming! In fact, they gutted nearly everything that made The Elder Scrolls unique so that Oblivion would "have wider appeal". Cyrodil was supposed to be a jungle and Imperials a mix of Mesoamerican and Roman cultures. I will never get over that opportunity being squandered in favor of yet more medieval fantasy England.

Bethesda stopped making good games after Morrowind. Now they make games that have the potential to be good... once the modders fix everything Todd Howard's careless mismanagement overlooked. For example, there was once an issue with Oblivion where the game ran the risk of crashing every time you opened a door. Despite this being a known issue, lo and behold, two years later Fallout 3 has the same bug! Both times it got fixed by fan patches. "All of this just works!", needs an amendment to "All of this just works... after the fans fix it".

[Fleisch]

2 hours ago, The Swanton825 said:

I really don't understand how Bethesda still has this kind of mystique with people. When was the last time Bethesda did anything groundbreaking? The settlement stuff in Fallout 4 was a mod for Fallout 3, complete with the exact same mechanics! I'm pretty sure Bethesda never even credited the original modder for the concept. Skyrim's "radiant quests" are just a renaming of the procedurally generated quests in Arena and Daggerfall. Oblivion managed to make persuasion into the most mind-numbing tedium in the history of gaming! In fact, they gutted nearly everything that made The Elder Scrolls unique so that Oblivion would "have wider appeal". Cyrodil was supposed to be a jungle and Imperials a mix of Mesoamerican and Roman cultures. I will never get over that opportunity being squandered in favor of yet more medieval fantasy England.

Bethesda stopped making good games after Morrowind. Now they make games that have the potential to be good... once the modders fix everything Todd Howard's careless mismanagement overlooked. For example, there was once an issue with Oblivion where the game ran the risk of crashing every time you opened a door. Despite this being a known issue, lo and behold, two years later Fallout 3 has the same bug! Both times it got fixed by fan patches. "All of this just works!", needs an amendment to "All of this just works... after the fans fix it".

Seriously, this makes Fallout 76 look like a marvel in gaming. The space combat is the absolute drizzling... well you know. NMS space combat is 1000 times better. The "space flight" is literally no more than clicking somewhere and your ship landing. A glorified loading screen. The ground combat is EXACTLY THE SAME as Fallout 4! Even bullet sponge enemies are back with a vengeance. Legendary items are pathetic. I found a legendary space suit that is worse than the crappy miners suit you start with! What is the point? I have a legendary gun that does less damage than the common gun I found 4 hours before! 10 hours now put into it to try and find something, anything, to justify putting in the hours but I'm deleting it instead. My advice is do not be fooled by the BS fed to you by Bethesda or Microsoft. This is a bang average 2010 game parading as a 2023 Triple A. Its awful.

[Big Roguey]

Gonna be honest, I've had the completely different experience with it. I've been really enjoying it. Don't care much for the space combat of it but the side quests I've been doing have been pretty fun and interesting. I dunno if it helps that I had no expectations going into it or what.

[The Swanton825]

20 minutes ago, Fleisch said:

Seriously, this makes Fallout 76 look like a marvel in gaming. The space combat is the absolute drizzling... well you know. NMS space combat is 1000 times better. The "space flight" is literally no more than clicking somewhere and your ship landing. A glorified loading screen. The ground combat is EXACTLY THE SAME as Fallout 4! Even bullet sponge enemies are back with a vengeance. Legendary items are pathetic. I found a legendary space suit that is worse than the crappy miners suit you start with! What is the point? I have a legendary gun that does less damage than the common gun I found 4 hours before! 10 hours now put into it to try and find something, anything, to justify putting in the hours but I'm deleting it instead. My advice is do not be fooled by the BS fed to you by Bethesda or Microsoft. This is a bang average 2010 game parading as a 2023 Triple A. Its awful.

So, hyperbole aside, it's Skyrim in space, then? Sounds about what I expected. Then again, I really don't know why people allow themselves to get hyped about these games. If dev time equaled quality, then Duke Nukem Forever and Cyberpunk 2077 would have launched as two of the most polished, sublime experiences humanity has to offer. The fact that they're still using the same Gamebryo engine that they've iterated on since MORROWIND should have been a dead giveaway that this wasn't going to be an 11/10 experience. Though I would argue that overhyped mediocrity IS AAA gaming at its core.

Also, gotta ask how you guys are playing it already? I thought you had to get $100 version to play early? Game Pass sure won't let me give it a shot.

[Jaysin]

I've paid for Skyrim more times than I can count. And I've played the vanilla version more often than not and love it. 

The Anniversary version on Switch has some added mods and stuff like survival mode, but Skyrim is legit one of my all time favorite games. 

Skyrim in space sounds pretty wonderful to me 😂

[Big Roguey]

2 hours ago, The Swanton825 said:

So, hyperbole aside, it's Skyrim in space, then? Sounds about what I expected. Then again, I really don't know why people allow themselves to get hyped about these games. If dev time equaled quality, then Duke Nukem Forever and Cyberpunk 2077 would have launched as two of the most polished, sublime experiences humanity has to offer. The fact that they're still using the same Gamebryo engine that they've iterated on since MORROWIND should have been a dead giveaway that this wasn't going to be an 11/10 experience. Though I would argue that overhyped mediocrity IS AAA gaming at its core.

Also, gotta ask how you guys are playing it already? I thought you had to get $100 version to play early? Game Pass sure won't let me give it a shot.

They were doing an upgrade, paid £30 to play it five days earlier - counted if the Game Pass version was downloaded too.

From the playthrough I've had so far, it's not really Skyrim-ish but, without trying to give spoilers to anyone reading it, the stuff I've been doing is corporate espionage based. There is definitely a lot of scope for role playing from what I've played so far.

[The Swanton825]

33 minutes ago, Big Roguey said:

They were doing an upgrade, paid £30 to play it five days earlier - counted if the Game Pass version was downloaded too.

From the playthrough I've had so far, it's not really Skyrim-ish but, without trying to give spoilers to anyone reading it, the stuff I've been doing is corporate espionage based. There is definitely a lot of scope for role playing from what I've played so far.

Ah, okay. I thought Game Pass was just messing with me again. Those early days of the PC beta... *shudders*

Wow, roleplaying opportunities in a Bethesda game? At this time of year, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your Xbox/PC? I was already planning on having this be my chillout, turn my brain off, kind of game like Fallout 4 was, but now I'm actively curious to see what it has to offer.

[Jaysin]

1 hour ago, Big Roguey said:

They were doing an upgrade, paid £30 to play it five days earlier - counted if the Game Pass version was downloaded too.

From the playthrough I've had so far, it's not really Skyrim-ish but, without trying to give spoilers to anyone reading it, the stuff I've been doing is corporate espionage based. There is definitely a lot of scope for role playing from what I've played so far.

I love games that let me role play! One of my favorite saves in Skyrim was me role playing as Kain from Blood Omen/Soul Reaver. 

I've also had fun Thor playthrough. 

I just bought a few games on Switch.

The Messenger

Sea of Stars

Into the Breach

Probably adding the Shadowrun Trilogy by the end of the night 😅

[The Swanton825]

So after finally giving it a go last night, Starfield is pretty much what I expected. Nothing mind-blowing, but compelling enough that I kept playing. It's still got that Bethesda jank to it though. Facial animations during conversation are lifted directly from Oblivion, complete with that same uncanny valley feeling I got playing Oblivion, gunplay is still not quite right, and the UI is terrible on PC. Positives: the inspiration of 60s-70s sci-fi is on full display and I don't get that aesthetic very often in games, I enjoy the not-quite-space-sim starship combat that reminds me of games like Star Wars Galaxies, and the progression system thus far feels like a happy medium between Skyrim and Fallout's systems.

[Self]

With all of the hype around Starfield, I got into the RPG mood and bought WrestleQuest. It's a JRPG mixed with wrestling mixed in a toy box, and it's alright. It's clearly made by a smaller team, a little bit buggy, and a little too on-the-rails for my liking (as of the 5 hour mark) but I'm having a decent time. I've complained before how I hate games where you're treated like most special boy in the universe. Where everyone loves you and thinks you're great and would follow you to the ends of the earth. That isn't WrestleQuest (so far anyhow). Most of the other characters think I'm an idiot and regularly tell me so. I love that. Gives me something to prove. Spite is a hell of a motivator. 

Speaking of proving something, I finally got around to getting rank in Overwatch. Bronze 2, which I hear is not the dirt worst rank you can be. After years of being vaguely afraid of online gaming, I am very proud of myself. Only had one person be specifically mean to me too. Although I don't have a headset, so there could be all manner of fired up promos going on that I'm unaware of. 

I'll try out Starfield when I can wrangle a free month of Game Pass again. They jacked up the price for this game, and there reviews aren't getting me too jazzed for it. 

 

[PaperMachete]

Currently doing a long overdue playthrough of Horizon: Zero Dawn with the intent of doing Forbidden West right after. It's been pretty good so far.

[The Swanton825]

3 hours ago, Self said:

With all of the hype around Starfield, I got into the RPG mood and bought WrestleQuest. It's a JRPG mixed with wrestling mixed in a toy box, and it's alright. It's clearly made by a smaller team, a little bit buggy, and a little too on-the-rails for my liking (as of the 5 hour mark) but I'm having a decent time. I've complained before how I hate games where you're treated like most special boy in the universe. Where everyone loves you and thinks you're great and would follow you to the ends of the earth. That isn't WrestleQuest (so far anyhow). Most of the other characters think I'm an idiot and regularly tell me so. I love that. Gives me something to prove. Spite is a hell of a motivator. 

I was planning on grabbing that around my birthday last month, but then I stupidly assumed that the initial low user score on Steam was legit and not because of review bombing. I'll probably grab it the next time I've got money.

[PaperMachete]

Finished the main story of Horizon: Zero Dawn today. Will spend a few hours getting the platinum trophy, then probably on to Forbidden West. Those who have played it, is it as good as Zero Dawn? Any gameplay mechanics that are worse than Zero Dawn? It's always my fear that they take a good mechanic and make it worse in the sequel.

[Mammoth]

4 minutes ago, PaperMachete said:

Finished the main story of Horizon: Zero Dawn today. Will spend a few hours getting the platinum trophy, then probably on to Forbidden West. Those who have played it, is it as good as Zero Dawn? Any gameplay mechanics that are worse than Zero Dawn? It's always my fear that they take a good mechanic and make it worse in the sequel.

It's just as good, and they're one of the very few who only added to the mechanics and didn't take anything away. I think you'll enjoy it.

[Sisma]

1 hour ago, PaperMachete said:

Finished the main story of Horizon: Zero Dawn today. Will spend a few hours getting the platinum trophy, then probably on to Forbidden West. Those who have played it, is it as good as Zero Dawn? Any gameplay mechanics that are worse than Zero Dawn? It's always my fear that they take a good mechanic and make it worse in the sequel.

It's even better! 

[guyver3]

Echoing that forbidden west is just as good as zero dawn.  I will add that I felt in forbidden west it pays off more to hold off on most of the side quests until your next story mission is the Kulrut give or take. I’m one that likes to finish and explore everything in an area before moving on to the next area but I remember there being even side quests that I either had to go back to do or would’ve been much less annoying had I waited. 

[PaperMachete]

Thanks, I'll definitely get started on FW after I've gotten top score on 12 more hunting grounds... so maybe a month from now 😂