Video Games – The Next Level

Topic

What are you playing?

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I finished my most recent runthrough of Stellaris the other day, with a resounding victory for the Union of Soviet Spacefaring Republics.  I chose to take manual control of planetary development and the economy this time, and it made things a lot easier overall.  The automated system does not use the tools provided to control administrative sprawl, which slows down tech development massively as well as increasing upkeep.  By keeping that under control, my tech levels were much higher going into the endgame, and I can probably drive development better by studying a tech tree.

This time around, the ending events were the War in Heaven, where a pair of ancient fallen empires decide to expand and go to war with each other again, and demand everyone picks a side.  In a nice B5 type moment most of the galaxy opted to reject both sides and join my Federation.  One of these empires was basically boxed in by me and my closest ally, and while it took some time – mostly researching better power plants – we were able to conquer them, but the other faction had the time to expand their fleets further, conquer more space, and int he middle of all me and another nation had to deal with Robot uprisings, and the Prethoryn showed up – but my tech level was high enough that they were quickly run off while only deploying half my navy against them.

This was also my first full playthrough with all the DLC I bought last year enabled, and they definitely added to the experience – most notably the addition of Titan and Colossal-size ships, and megastructures.  It was very cool to be able to build habitats in solar systems, and have multiple dyson spheres and ringworlds in my space.

I definitely want to kick off another game soon-ish.  Might go for a borg-type setup next time.

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Props to Lorcan for pulling this off while I at times did my best to drunkenly bug the shit out of him on Discord.

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lorcan_nagle

Anonymous wrote:

You could complete all of hollow knight while the quick time events from far cry 3 are going. I fucking hate those.

Serious Q: How bad are they?

The wolves QTE killed Assassin’s Creed 3 – random button presses with a very narrow time window and near-total death for failure.

Ben wrote:

Serious Q: How bad are they?

First playthrough? Not awful. Story progression.

Second playthrough and onwards? Megacringe blah blah blah.

[Ben]

Decided to finish Judgment.

Overall, it’s a very good but not great game – a sequel might nail that and I hope there is one, the character cast alone is good enough to carry it.

What works? Far and away, above all else, the story.  It is a very strong example of how to do a complex story of good and evil with ambiguity.  It will always keep you coming back to see how it resolves, even if the gameplay is weaker or some of its execution, in rare moments, falters.  There are a couple of missed opportunities here but more on those in a bit.

What is flawed are the investigative sections, especially the tailing missions.  True, these are not that difficult but neither are they good or fun.  The biggest problem is the game sets up a system of hiding spots then undermines it by making those hiding spots hard to see in advance, which is pretty much needed on these missions so you can quickly plan your route.  The other factor that undermines these is that, no matter who you are tailing, they all act like they are trained in counter espionage.  Which, in most cases, doesn’t fit at all.  They could be better, without all the bullcrap and crappy coding.

Photo missions? Not good.  Drone? Also bad, the controls particularly so.  The detective missions involving “evidence” revealing? I pretty much hit the net and used a guide on them because none of them made any sense to me whatsoever.  I will give it that there’s so smart scripting for when you don’t make the right choice but overall, not a fan.  The friend system? Practically gates off a lot of content to no tangible, positive benefit.  The Keihin Gang sections?  Could be fun but the game guilt trips you by deeming it a failure if you don’t take out at least one leader.  Why would you not want to do that?  Because you get greater SP (upgrade points) by duffing up all the minions, in contrast the leaders just don’t pay as well and have access to the worst combat feature in the game:

Mortal wounds / deadly attacks.  I can see the idea but it’s not a good one and the execution is crap.  If medical kits were more easily available, there were multiple doctors, maybe it’d be better.  But even if that were so, the practical effect of this feature is that I ensure I have a full EX bar, batter the boss, boss goes nuclear, I hit EX boost, batter the boss into submission.  That’s it – there’s nothing else to it.  Yes, sometimes you can use EX moves to interrupt their super attacks, but only sometimes.  There’s a sidequest that sees you fight an escaped convict, the guy has a lot of health but none of this crap and it was far better for it.  Similarly, your battles with strong enemies might actually have more strategy and tactics than all the boss fights.  Yes, this turns up in – and wrecks – all of them.  In the endgame, some enemies have guns and those always inflict mortal wounds, with the bullets passing through everything in their way to only hit Yagami.

Away from that, combat mostly works very well, despite some weak targeting – in one case, every time I targeted an enemy, he was behind me, it was very blatant coding.  Like the Yakuza series, you can inflict some wonderfully vicious moves on your enemies.  What doesn’t work is the sprint toggle, neither in combat or out of.  This renders a good entire couple of move sets useless most of the time – the wall moves and leapfrog ones.  For the last couple of levels, the sprint behaved very erratically.

Bar the camera forcing certain directions, the chase sections tend to be quite good.  Not too difficult, mostly fun and not too long.

Now, let’s talk about that final level.  No game in recent years has had a final level that perfectly combines plot momentum and gameplay.  It’s always that bit off and this one was no exception. The game gets a bit of momentum going, you have some major fights, though they show up the weakness of the targeting – you will know what you want to do, but the game just won’t let you do it, but after a few of these, with boss enemies thrown in – it then grinds to a halt to do a weird first person sequence – supposedly to simulate Yagami hallucinating, but it is so weirdly executed, plus the whole time the mission indicator is saying ‘chase x’, which you do in the most leisurely way possible, then it ends and its final boss time.

I do have to give the game credit for chapters 8-11, this is perhaps the most successful, sustained main plot I’ve seen in ages – twists follow twists, the gameplay is good, the fights work, you just keeping wanting to play to see what happens next.  Also, maybe this is only true on Easy, but the game’s two escort missions are actually fun.  In large part, this is due to the character being escorted not being a total moron, as is so often the way.

Those missed opportunities? At one point, Saori is talked into being a hostess and, after dressing her up – something that there’s apparently a large fanbase for but which I don’t get – the game puts you in a first-person view, being Saori.  What follows is a load of catcalls and comments from leering blokes, which makes for a quite disturbing sequence.  The game then stops that in the hostess club, in favour of a conversation guessing game, though it still feels very dodgy. I think more could have been done with this.

It would be great to get a sequel that built on what is established here, because with a few tweaks, some of its ideas could be superb.  In the interim, however, I’ll manage with Yakuza: Like A Dragon.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Ben.

I tried out Generation Zero on a recommendation, without doing any proper research. That was money wasted. It starts out great but gets super repetitive within a couple of hours at most. It just runs out of juice real fast. Not only are the missions carbon copies of each other. Every single place looks exactly the same. And the map is sooooo big. If you scare easily, maybe you could immerse in the mystery and story but it’s not a real game. The gameplay is literally just the first half an hour over and over and over.

The environment and graphics though. They were really nice. Nice enough to trick me in to spending actual money at this.

On scale of 1 to 5, I give this a solid PASS!

Don’t go there.

So I’ve been playing Hollow Knight.

I may … may … need to come to terms with the fact that I’m perhaps not very good at 2D platformers.

It’s also quite hard anyway, in a Dark Souls level of hardness.  I like being punished for being a bad boy in videogames but I’m starting to think this is too sadomasochistic even for me.

It’s early days though.  Perhaps I will learn to enjoy the pain.

I’m on the next Kingdom Hearts game: Dream Drop Distance.

This was originally for the 3DS and it really shows, with gratuitous stereoscopic bits. The world map for instance is now a series of spheres stretching back into the screen, rather than the usual navigable field. Each world also starts with a “dive”, which is an on-rails shooter type section of Sora and Riku falling to the world in question. I say shooter, it’s more an on-rails… brawler, I guess? Cos you can shoot things, only hit things as you get close to them. They’re not great sections.

The gameplay is decent, but has three new gimmicks. The first is that, unlike the other unnumbered games, you get companion characters this time around. Unfortunately, they’re “spirits” which are tame versions of the Dream Eater monsters taking the place of the Heartless in this game. There’s various bumpf around getting them, battling them in arenas and levelling them (which is the main way of unlocking abilities, unfortunately) but they’re a bit underwhelming. The AI for them isn’t great – they’re constantly getting stuck and left behind – and in the heat of battle it’s very hard to tell them apart from the enemy Dream Eaters.

The second innovations is “flow-motion”, which is another attempt at making it quicker to get around the game. This involves sliding on rails and swinging off lampposts. You can use this launch attacks (and can swing around large enemies to throw them, which is handy) but ultimately it’s a bit of a ballache, as I frequently find myself trying to get around a level or through a fight and unwittingly jumping onto something the game treats as a flowmotion rail and end up rushed away from whatever I’m doing (or back into the fray when retreating). So that’s a bit pointless. I don’t know why they don’t just up the run speed.

And the third addition is the “drop” system. This is where you’re constantly on a timer, shown by a drop gauge near your health bar. When it reaches zero, you’re taken out of the game and forced to switch from Sora to Riku (or vice-versa), who are independently going through the various worlds. It’s a bit of a pain really, because it can hit even when you’re in the middle of a battle (which you’ll get thrown right back into). I don’t know why the game feels the need to force you to switch up characters and I’d rather do it at my own pace. It’s even more irksome when you’ve got worlds that have stories of different lengths for each character. The one I finished last night was pretty quick for Riku, whereas when I switched back to Sora, it dragged on for ages and I had to stop the game from dropping me back to Riku (by using an item, which is more onerous than it sounds, as you have to equip it into your deck in place of an attack to use it, which means all your specials reloading from scratch) long before I finished it.

Despite all that, it’s a fun game. The combat is built around the deck system Birth By Sleep used, which is pretty solid and much easier to get to grips with than that from the “main” games. There’s still a bit of a problem with soft lock-0n targeting (the game pushing your attacks to what it thinks is the nearest target even when you’re not locked on to anything) but generally it all plays well. The selection of worlds is interesting too. Hunchback of Notre Dame isn’t one of my favourites, but it’s an overdue inclusion. I could have lived without the return visit to Pinocchio (I HATE Pinocchio) but Tron: Legacy is interesting. Weird – realistic humans always are in KH – and I’ve even less interest in watching that film now, but interesting. The Mickey, Donald, Goofy Musketeers world is cool. No idea how they gels with the existing lore of KH, but I think it’s getting hand-waved by this game being in dreams, which is being used as an excuse for various stuff.

Speaking of lore, this game actually pushes along the ongoing story somewhat, more than you might expect from a non-numbered Kingdom Hearts game. The series has broken out of the trap of it falls into of endlessly circling around and regurgitating the same stuff. It doesn’t seem particularly long though. I’m only(!) 12 hours in but there’s seemingly only two more worlds to go (Fantasia and something else) and that’s with a return visit to the first world – Traverse Town, hosting Squeenix RPG The Worlds Ends With You – so unless there’s a big twist coming up, it’s relatively brief. That’s not a terrible thing. I have been ignoring a lot of side-stuff too, which has probably kept the count down.

Oh shit, @Ben

I really liked the ending of Judgment I thought the showdown was really cool.

I agree that the photo and drone stuff sucks, but it seems more like an homage to Ace Attorney then intended to be actually … you know, “good”.

I would definitely play a sequel.  Yagami is a great character.

I also agree with you about the hostess sequence.  I thought the same thing when I played it – that more could have been done.

To be honest, I agree with pretty much everything in that review.  Even the mortal wounds thing (which was fine to add a bit of extra tension, but became a bit tedious)

Something I forgot to mention is that, for all they’re trying to keep the two series separate, you could see some subtle links between them, like Kamurocho Hills being fully developed or the rebuilding of Little Asia, which got torched in Yakuza 6.

Quite a few games on the horizon.

Okami HD remaster and Far Cry New Dawn. These are down to £8 and £10 on the xbox store. Rather than buying the digital version though I’ve put bids on preowned versions of the games on ebay with a max bid of the sale prices. If I lose the auctions no biggie, I’ll buy the digital copies but if I win the auctions it’ll mean I recoup some of the cost when i eventually trade them in. Main problem with this is I don’t actually have either of them to play yet!

Peggle 2. Found a code for it online for £2.05. Bought it without thinking. Unfortunately it was for the xbox 360 version. Fortunately it’s playable on xbox one. The kid loves the first one and after an hour or two with the sequel this afternoon it looks like this one is more of the same.

Maneater. The wife was going into town to buy school shoes for the child so I took advantage of the lift and headed in to town to trade in some games at Game. Good news: ended up only needing to pay £10 for this. Bad news: Game haven’t had a delivery since they reopened (they were only allowed to reopen on Monday since they are located in a shopping centre) so they had to place the order on their website. Hopefully this will be delivered tomorrow.

Wuppo. No clue what this is. Looks like a cute hand drawn indie platformer. It was only £1.24 to download so it was hardly a massive gamble. Hopefully it’s good but I’ll not lose sleep if it’s shite.

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Dave

Okami is a stunning game. Steeped in Japanese myth and folklore. Humorous too. The celestial brush to paint slashing combat moves and bring dead trees back to bloom in delicate watercolour against the canvas background – it all gradually builds on acquired skills that become intuitive.

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Bruce

Hope you enjoy Maneater, Bruce.

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Bruce

Not quite a haiku:

Wow

My copy of Ghost

Is in the post.

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Yeah im picking it up Friday.

Parallel play!

Edit: you really should play ff7r though

Bruce wrote:

Peggle 2. Found a code for it online for £2.05. Bought it without thinking. Unfortunately it was for the xbox 360 version. Fortunately it’s playable on xbox one. The kid loves the first one and after an hour or two with the sequel this afternoon it looks like this one is more of the same.

I love Peggle, Peggle Nights and Peggle 2. With Zuma and Plants Vs Zombies, it really is the best of PopCap Games.

I doubt I’ll have it by Friday

[Ben]

For all I wasn’t hooked by Far Cry 4, there are some killer deals for digital copies of both its predecessor and successor on PSN:

• Far Cry 3 = £2.49
• Far Cry 5 = £6.99

Pretty crazy, both expire 22 July – I’ll likely bag both of them.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Ben.

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Dave

Ben wrote:

Far Cry 3 = £2.49

Sold.

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Andrew

Yeah, it’s nuts, you can’t quite credit it but yeah, those be the prices.

On a related point, for all the talk of Ps5 games being £10 more, I’m inclined to reckon all that means is the games will depreciate more post-release.

 

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Dave

I finished Dream Drop Distance. About 20 hours in all, which includes me going off and grinding for a couple of hours to get past the last boss. Not a terrible length for a game, but still seems a little short for a Kingdom Hearts.

Have to say, given how convoluted the story for Kingdom Hearts is, it was a bold choice to throw in time travel on top of dream stuff.

Yeah I have to say Martin, I’m not really fussed that I side-stepped all the stuff between KH1 and KH3.

KH3 was bad enough to work out what had gone on with all the characters but at least the narrative was reasonably linear

Ben wrote:

Yeah, it’s nuts, you can’t quite credit it but yeah, those be the prices.

On a related point, for all the talk of Ps5 games being £10 more, I’m inclined to reckon all that means is the games will depreciate more post-release.

 

This is probably right but my basic business brain says you will not see the maximum depreciation until mid-generation.

Games in Australia are still sold at  30 dollar premium above resellers selling them at the RRP (for example JB HiFi sells new release games for $69 while EB games sells them for $99) which makes an absurd business model, but dedicated games stores are going out of business (with digital) so there’s no incentive to not sell those games at a mark up.

I suppose it’s possible that this could be an opportunity for the dedicated game shops to try to recoup market-share by price-matching the inevitable price-hikes of the RRP stores, but I doubt it.

In any event, this is a long winded way of me saying while it sucks, historically for us games have hit those price levels anyway so it doesn’t seem quite so bad.

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Ben

Maaan I’m so bummed, this year’s been pretty shit, and that’s without even factoring the stupid virus. So there were 4 releases I was looking forward to: The PC release of Samurai Shodown 7, Orcs Must Die 3, and Streets of Rage 4… plus the Samurai Shodown Collection.

So first of all, the Samsho Collection did come out on Steam and everything, but it’s just utter garbage… It’s exactly what I was afraid of, meaning a lazy cashgrab by that shit-ass studio Digital Eclipse. ZERO effort in that thing… now, fortunately, Epic had it for free, so I grabbed it to my gigantic disapointment… it wasn’t even worth the time I spent opening an account for it.

The second one, and most disapointing: Samsho7… so that one first got a Stadia exclusive, then an Epic exclusive… by the time it gets on Steam, and that’s a big IF at this point, it’s gonna be DOA. It doesn’t help that japanese devs are horrible at netcode and their netcode is pure garbage.

Then Orcs Must Die 3… that was also announced as a Stadia exclusive for who knows how long, and hey unlike Epic, you can’t even open a Stadia account in my country, so even if I was willing to pay them, nope.

And then there’s SoR4, which fortunately is a good game, got a Steam release, and with a fair price… but it’s also a very low budget game, and a bit disapointing from that point of view, but out of the 4, it’s definitely the winner by a large margin.

Anyways, point being, fuck you 2020. What a shit year… =/

Ben wrote:

Yeah, it’s nuts, you can’t quite credit it but yeah, those be the prices.

On a related point, for all the talk of Ps5 games being £10 more, I’m inclined to reckon all that means is the games will depreciate more post-release.

 

Yeah, I think you’re right.

Plus I kind of expect retailer discounts to mean that a new game doesn’t really cost a huge amount more than it does already. If there’s a difference it will be a few quid.

Pricing for games is an odd thing. In the megadrive days a brand new release would cost you around £40, going up to around £50 in special cases.

And today the price structure for games is exactly the same, despite inflation (which is true for movies too – a new Blu-Ray costs the same as a VHS in the ’90s) but also despite the massive extra amounts of work that go into a game these days – years and years of it from huge teams in some cases – compared to back then when games and development cycles were much shorter.

So I don’t begrudge a slightly higher price if one is coming, as in terms of value for money I think videogames are one of the most cost-effective forms of entertainment out there, given how many hours of engagement they provide. But I do think the market will ultimately settle at a level that’s not too far away from where it is now.

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Ben

Tim, tempting as it is to say your retailers have been taking the mick,I’m pretty certain Game does the same crap.  It’s online where savings are got or digital copies.

JB Hifi is consistently better priced for new releases then playstation store, but not for old releases.

You could nab Days Gone on the PS store for 25 bucks ladt month, while JB still had it for 70 and EB for 100.

But new releases – Ghost is 90 on ps store and 70 at JB

As a complete aside I did a project in my last job with JB Hifi. So I have had dozens of conversations with them without ever having been near one of their shops.

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Dave

Dave wrote:

And today the price structure for games is exactly the same, despite inflation (which is true for movies too – a new Blu-Ray costs the same as a VHS in the ’90s) but also despite the massive extra amounts of work that go into a game these days – years and years of it from huge teams in some cases – compared to back then when games and development cycles were much shorter. So I don’t begrudge a slightly higher price if one is coming, as in terms of value for money I think videogames are one of the most cost-effective forms of entertainment out there, given how many hours of engagement they provide. But I do think the market will ultimately settle at a level that’s not too far away from where it is now.

At least part of that is due to the shift to disc based media making raw manufacturing oodles cheaper. Part of why Switch games are usuall £5-10 more expensive (in RRP at least) is the cost of the game card, especially for games that need high capacity ones.

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Dave

[Martin Smith]

Anonymous wrote:

Yeah I have to say Martin, I’m not really fussed that I side-stepped all the stuff between KH1 and KH3. KH3 was bad enough to work out what had gone on with all the characters but at least the narrative was reasonably linear

Yeah, skipping 8 games of story will cause that. There’s a lot of significant stuff between KH1 and KH2.

I had thought about bouncing off to something else before tackling the next “adventure” in the KH compilation – Birth By Sleep Fragmentary Passage –  but a quick google tells me it’s only about 3 hours long and the final one, Back Cover, even less than that, so I might just forge through and get it all finished.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Martin Smith.

Martin Smith wrote:

Dave wrote:

And today the price structure for games is exactly the same, despite inflation (which is true for movies too – a new Blu-Ray costs the same as a VHS in the ’90s) but also despite the massive extra amounts of work that go into a game these days – years and years of it from huge teams in some cases – compared to back then when games and development cycles were much shorter. So I don’t begrudge a slightly higher price if one is coming, as in terms of value for money I think videogames are one of the most cost-effective forms of entertainment out there, given how many hours of engagement they provide. But I do think the market will ultimately settle at a level that’s not too far away from where it is now.

At least part of that is due to the shift to disc based media making raw manufacturing oodles cheaper. Part of why Switch games are usuall £5-10 more expensive (in RRP at least) is the cost of the game card, especially for games that need high capacity ones.

True, but digital games are usually sold at the same RRP (often even when the discs become cheaper) so there’s definitely some level of artificiality to it, and seeing what the market will bear.

[Andrew]

Anonymous wrote:

Far Cry 3 is still the best game in the series

I recall you played 3 and 5; did you actually play 4? It’s very similar to 3; practically identical gameplay, bigger map, more weapons.

Little list:

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/jul/16/the-25-greatest-video-game-consoles-ranked

SNES at number one, just ahead of the PS2.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Andrew.

Those lists are always interesting, as it generally comes down to the consoles you spent most time with in your own personal golden age of gaming. So they tend to tell you more about the person writing rather than being a decent objective measure of the consoles themselves.

Still, given that subjective element, not a bad list. I’d definitely swap out the Megadrive with the SNES (although again, personal experience plays a big role there) and the omission of the Nintendo Gameboy – and indeed any handhelds – is a bit baffling, but otherwise they’re mostly solid contenders I think.

Ive played all the Farcrys except for 4, Primal and New Dawn.

I still think 3 is the best and Im too stubborn to admit I could be wrong and 4 might displace it.

FC6 serms to be returning to alot of what made FC3 interesring though

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Andrew

As much as I love the SNES, I’d put the PS2 at the top. Sure its controllers have a half-life shorter than most of the bottom of the periodic table and it could rarely read its own proprietary disc format (the blue ones) when they were bothered to be used, but it simply was video games for so long. Between about 2001 and 2005 if you made a game that wasn’t on the PS2, you were either an idiot or Nintendo (ok, or Microsoft). It was just the platonic  ideal of a video game platform in a way only the Famicom/NES has also ever been.

And that’s all before you factor in how important it was at popularising DVD too.

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Dave

Sorry if this is a double post, I think the board ate it.

I breezed through KH Birth By Sleep Fragmentary Passage this evening. Interesting little thing.
It’s essentially just an extended promo for Kingdom Hearts 3. Not just with the wodges of cutscenes front and back setting that up, but it’s a showcase of what I assume will be KH3’s control scheme and graphical style.
Neither bowled me over, to be honest. The graphics are absolutely a huge leap over that from the previous games, with fancy lighting, effects and so much hair modelling. It’s technically very impressive. But I don’t think it’s actually an improvement over the more simplistic styles of Dream Drop and the like. Sora in particular looks a bit odd in full HD and there’s an animation aesthetic of sorts to the simpler style that is lost.

The control scheme goes back to something closer to KH2. That makes sense given the limited range of powers available here, but it’s more ungainly than the deck system from Birth By Sleep and DDD. Having to go through sub-menus in combat is never pleasant.

Aqua’s story is fun – I really enjoyed the scale of the boss fights – but it felt a little slight, even for a three hour promo thing. I thought it’d do more than just add background details to KH1.

It’s also quite clear that Hayden Panettiere has been replaced as the voice of Kairi. The series is usually quite good at getting sound-a-likes (Corey Burton is especially good at doing Christopher Lee’s Ansem the Wise) but this sticks out a bit.

Martin Smith wrote:

As much as I love the SNES, I’d put the PS2 at the top. Sure its controllers have a half-life shorter than most of the bottom of the periodic table and it could rarely read its own proprietary disc format (the blue ones) when they were bothered to be used, but it simply was video games for so long. Between about 2001 and 2005 if you made a game that wasn’t on the PS2, you were either an idiot or Nintendo (ok, or Microsoft). It was just the platonic  ideal of a video game platform in a way only the Famicom/NES has also ever been.

And that’s all before you factor in how important it was at popularising DVD too.

It’s really hard to judge between different eras I think. The Megadrive, SNES, PS2, Gamecube, PS3, N64, NES, DS, PS4, Dreamcast, Wii, and Game Boy would all rate highly for me for various reasons, but it feels hard to compare them directly across the decades like that.

garjones wrote:

As a complete aside I did a project in my last job with JB Hifi. So I have had dozens of conversations with them without ever having been near one of their shops.

Thats cool!

Do you remembee who you talked to? One of their chief executives lives near my parents (but I forget his name). Its become quite a success story in Australia

Martin Smith wrote:

Sorry if this is a double post, I think the board ate it. I breezed through KH Birth By Sleep Fragmentary Passage this evening. Interesting little thing. It’s essentially just an extended promo for Kingdom Hearts 3. Not just with the wodges of cutscenes front and back setting that up, but it’s a showcase of what I assume will be KH3’s control scheme and graphical style. Neither bowled me over, to be honest. The graphics are absolutely a huge leap over that from the previous games, with fancy lighting, effects and so much hair modelling. It’s technically very impressive.

Pretty much.  Though, I think this has the edge, just, on KH3, graphically.

In other news, new No Man’s Sky update – didn’t like the last two, will this break that bad run? May find out tomorrow if the 11.4GB of it downloads in time.

[Martin Smith]

Martin Smith wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Yeah I have to say Martin, I’m not really fussed that I side-stepped all the stuff between KH1 and KH3. KH3 was bad enough to work out what had gone on with all the characters but at least the narrative was reasonably linear

Yeah, skipping 8 games of story will cause that. There’s a lot of significant stuff between KH1 and KH2.

I had thought about bouncing off to something else before tackling the next “adventure” in the KH compilation – Birth By Sleep Fragmentary Passage –  but a quick google tells me it’s only about 3 hours long and the final one, Back Cover, even less than that, so I might just forge through and get it all finished.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Martin Smith.

Yeah I wasnt really suggesting otherwise, but a little surprised that so muchnmajpr stuff appears to have happened on titles for other consoles instead of just the PS3.

I guess my comment was more to suggest the backstory became so convoluted and it was hard enough to work put what I needed to to follow the narrative of KH3 (i.e the heartless duplicate characters) that Im not hugely inclined to dive into the earlier stuff. I had a wiki to guide me through the stuff I was really exprcted to know and even that was a bit head scratchy

Anonymous wrote:

Do you remembee who you talked to? One of their chief executives lives near my parents (but I forget his name). Its become quite a success story in Australia

Not any more, honestly age is catching up, I can remember tedious details of the project but I realised last week I can’t even remember the name of my last direct boss. Then I went to the pub quiz on Monday and this bloke came up for a chat, recognised the face, no idea with the name so I just called him ‘chief’.

I think there was a guy called Peter. 😂

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Todd

Well Peter remembers you!

Theyre always talking aboit the “very nice welsh bloke that lives in Malaysia” anytime I go into any of the 100 something stores across the country.

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Andrew, garjones

[Martin Smith]

Anonymous wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Yeah I have to say Martin, I’m not really fussed that I side-stepped all the stuff between KH1 and KH3. KH3 was bad enough to work out what had gone on with all the characters but at least the narrative was reasonably linear

Yeah, skipping 8 games of story will cause that. There’s a lot of significant stuff between KH1 and KH2.

I had thought about bouncing off to something else before tackling the next “adventure” in the KH compilation – Birth By Sleep Fragmentary Passage –  but a quick google tells me it’s only about 3 hours long and the final one, Back Cover, even less than that, so I might just forge through and get it all finished.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Martin Smith.

Yeah I wasnt really suggesting otherwise, but a little surprised that so muchnmajpr stuff appears to have happened on titles for other consoles instead of just the PS3.

I guess my comment was more to suggest the backstory became so convoluted and it was hard enough to work put what I needed to to follow the narrative of KH3 (i.e the heartless duplicate characters) that Im not hugely inclined to dive into the earlier stuff. I had a wiki to guide me through the stuff I was really exprcted to know and even that was a bit head scratchy

Ah right. Yeah, given that the “side” games propel the story forward as much as the “main” ones, it’s a bit disingenuous that they bother numbering, really.

My copy of Ghost arrived far faster than expected!

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Dave

Ghost of Tsushima, Ben? It looks breathtaking visually. All those floating particle effects.

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Dave, Ben

Anonymous wrote:

Ghost of Tsushima, Ben? It looks breathtaking visually. All those floating particle effects.

Pretty much why I bought it.  Watching the trailers, there was something different, something new and then it clicked – they’ve managed to do leaves in a game.

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Dave

It looks like everything is in a continuous flow of motion with the breeze, leaves, grass, wildlife. The sunsets look pretty too. Should prove very immersive.

I like the idea of the black and white Kurosawa mode.

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Dave

It’s a beautiful looking game. My stack is currently too big to justify another purchase just yet, but it’s definitely on my list.

Dave wrote:

the omission of the Nintendo Gameboy – and indeed any handhelds

That’s going to be a separate “Ranked” listicle.

Anonymous wrote:

Ive played all the Farcrys except for 4, Primal and New Dawn.

I’m telling you as someone who loved FC3 and played it twice in a row (I don’t usually do that), that FC4 is just as good (if not better). Which made FC5 even more of a letdown.

Ghost is on my list right after Last of Us 2. Someday.

My kingdom for a yacht console.

Andrew wrote:

That’s going to be a separate “Ranked” listicle.

Ah, missed that detail. Thanks.

Ben, you may try re-posting. I can see you’ve posted something but it’s not here.

Again? It was displaying 5 minutes ago.

[Ben]

What the fuck is wrong with this fucking board? It doesn’t post, then it posts and then deletes the post and now it puts a load of formatting shit in my post that I didn’t fucking tell it to.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Ben.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Ben.

One last try:

Right, let’s get straight to it – Ghost of Tsuschima starts badly, very badly, the details I’ll spoiler-code but ye gods, I was left wondering if they’d play tested it and, if they did, then clearly their testers were a bunch of bastards.

Initially it starts off very good,with you and other Samurai storming the Mongul forces.  The only flaw here is, like other games, it can be hard to tell friend from foe, but the combat is very smart.  You then storm the castle, doing a Standsoff along the way that is pretty cool.  I had expected that to be harder, but so far, it works well.  One thing that feels odd is the spear enemies having far too high defence and, in the heat of the combat, the standard dodge doesn’t work well.  It should be single button, hopefully the roll move I’ve unlocked will be better.  Camera really ought to pull out a bit more too.  It then does the unwinnable-boss-fight which would have been better as a cutscene.  It also has said boss doing red unblockable attacks.  The problem I have with this is that it feels too much like video game artifice.  Not least because I’m supposed to buy this ‘special attack’ can phase right through a fucking katana? It feels too much like something they felt they had to put in, that it was expected, but it undermines the sense of the world being crafted.  It acts as a reminder that yes, you are playing a video game.  After this is where the game near killed itself dishonourably, with a bad, auto-fail stealth / game intro.  It indicates where you are to go by a small white circle.  Problem is that small, white circle doesn’t work as an indicator, it does not say to me ‘go here’.  When you finally get the sword, after bad directions and delayed prompts, at a point when you’re still learning how to play, it starts to get better.  Then, it does another stealth sequence that felt very strange.  At one point a guy found the bodies, no you can’t hide them, expressed alarm, then nothing happened.  It was odd.

Once the game became the open-world game it was sold as it started to recover from these self-inflicted disasters.  It looks amazing and, to be honest, I don’t want to use the horse.  Carefully following a fox to a shrine, finding a survivor camp, while the entire time there’s wonderfully depicted world of perpetual motion?  It’s stunning and very satisfying.

The one enduring flaw here, for me, it’ll probably work well enough for everyone else, is the whole ‘follow the wind’ mechanic doesn’t work.  It’s too vague, too ambiguous – wonderfully animated yes, but not so great for indicating where you should be going.  The game also seems to think its sound is good enough to indicate directionality – it isn’t.  A minor flaw is when you are doing missions if you go too far off track, you get told to return to ‘Tales area’, which assumes you know where the hell it is or you get warped back to the start of the mission!

What do I expect? I expect to not finish this.  I expect to keep it because the world is so well depicted, but I expect to get to a point where its video game bullshit overwhelms any desire I have to progress the story.

Talking of lacking desire to play a game, let’s move onto the tragedy of No Man’s Sky.

Tragedy? Yeah, because the last three updates have been just that – tragic.  The first decided that, in a galaxy of interstellar travel, with technology enabling that, of course all bases suddenly need a wired power system!  The second decided to strip away the cool-as-fuck environmental protections of the exocraft to replace them with finite protection modules to ‘encourage’ players to build their new, big, slow mech.  And the new third one?  It gets one thing right – you can have a teleporter on your freighter but the rest? Fails due to them wanting too much grind and I’m someone who maxed out AC Odyssey without an XP booster – grind can be fine, if fun but this one? It’s not.  Freighter customisation sounds great, the problem? Each colour costs 5000 nanites, most missions pay in the region of 200-250.  To get each colour, it’s a lot of missions.

This crosses over into what should have been its biggest victory – the abandoned freighters in space.  How do they screw this up?  First, when you land and exit your craft you are told, on these freighters the game does not save, as it usually should.  Not impressed.  Then, it inflicts a mechanic where you walk slowly around the wreck while slowly being frozen, yes, yes, it’s realism but realism does not make it good.  Switching on heat hubs helps but it is still you slowly walking round a frozen wreck.  And the final error? The cost of finding them, the first cost me 5m credits, the next one – 10m? My response would have been ‘get tae fuck’ rather than ‘leave’.  Had they set both of these at a lower price tag it would have made both far more attractive but the prices set deter me from playing.

As I said, tragic.

Now onto the big surprise – Stellaris.

There were some significant hurdles here, the greatest being that the interface has changed but the tutorials have not all been.  So when it talks of spaceport it’s actually referring to your shipyard – very confusing, very irritating.  The other irritation it doesn’t seem possible to keep the ‘how to’ tutorial text up while you are working how to do what it describes.

However, however, if you persist with a dizzying array of options, a ton of menus and a number swarm, gradually, it starts to make  a kind of sense this, at one point I had:

•    One science ship investigating an anomaly in a partially surveyed system
•    A colony being built in Alpha Centauri
•    A research station or two
•    Two to three corvettes under construction
This was then followed by building another starbase elsewhere while sending my only fleet to blast the crap out of an asteroid.

The game has a quite wry sense of humour too when it told me my leader had gained experience, but also developed a drug habit!

It is also very subtly addictive, things keep happening at just the right rate to encourage you to keep playing.  So, how engaging can a screen of numbers? Well, if you have some understanding of what they mean, the answer is very.

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[garjones]

In 2006 there was a serious theft in my office. A security guy came in and suspended a dozen of us on full pay while they investigated.

I was of course innocent as the day is long and fully reinstated but for 4 weeks sat on my arse in a flat and bought a PSP to pass the time. I got quite hooked on Marvel X-Men Alliance or something like that. I now want to rekindle that love and have been looking at knock-off handheld consoles online. This is Asia, they seriously don’t give a shit about copyright but just enough not to specifically name which games are in the ‘300 top titles’ they put on a memory card.

It’s taking a lot of work to find the one that costs 10 quid but has that X-Men game.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by garjones.

4 users thanked author for this post.

Todd, Andrew, Bruce, Dave

Ben wrote:

Right, let’s get straight to it – Ghost of Tsuschima starts badly, very badly

We all knew it was coming!

Maneater is a stupid game. I fucking love it.

It’s kind of clunky to control and the camera can be a bit skittish but I’ve been just spent the last two hours zooming about the place eating wee fishes, turtles, and slightly more challenging alligators. In that respect it’s a bit like Goat Stimulator – ie a fuck about simulator – only with a bit more polish and structure to it.

I was a little bit concerned to see that after that I was at 19% story completion but I figure this isn’t the sort of game you squeeze 100s of hours out of. Plus, you don’t need a huge open world extravaganza when you just want to eat a bunch of people.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Bruce wrote:

Goat Stimulator

What’s the rating on that one?

(Glad you’re enjoying Maneater Bruce – I knew you would!)

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Bruce

Bruce wrote:

I was a little bit concerned to see that after that I was at 19% story completion but I figure this isn’t the sort of game you squeeze 100s of hours out of. Plus, you don’t need a huge open world extravaganza when you just want to eat a bunch of people.

I like the gradual progression in terms of the shark’s appearance and abilities. The curve is pitched just right so that the new stuff comes along just as you’re at risk of getting bored.

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Bruce

Ben wrote:

Right, let’s get straight to it – Ghost of Tsuschima starts badly, very badly.

Ive been playing it too!

Counterpoint: Ghost of Tsuschima starts great, really great!

[Ben]

I know you read the rest of the post Tim.

The start start is pretty awesome, especially the intro to combat – the talk of how precise it is was no exaggeration.  I like that if you get hit you can block the subsequent ones, there’s none of this ‘oh, you got hit by one, now you must get hit by unblockable combo chain’ stuff.

Afterwards, it all depends on how you like stealth missions with no tools.  Given my idea of stealth is waltzing up with a bazooka….

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Ben.

Of course I did!

I plan on writing a post along the lines of encouraging you not to drop this. But, its 8.30am in the morning.

Honestly, I dont share any of your criticisms. The only one of them im inclined to support is your comment about the AI in stealth, which I habe read is a bit shit but not something ive encountered.

Particularly, for me, the combat and tracking works fine. The combat has a learning curve and you are not expected to master it out of the gate. Thankfully there appears to be no penalty whatsoever for dying- you simply restart at the same checkpoint 30 seconds previous without any lost resources or anything. It also gives you the iption to avoid the encounter.

Theres a lot about this which feels like Assassins Creed (which you love) so im hoping youll be open to learning to play the game how its asking to be played.

Mind you, im only 2 or so hours in but have fone the first 3 “character” Tales.

Anonymous wrote:

I plan on writing a post along the lines of encouraging you not to drop this.

I disagree that it’s needed.  I bought it for the open world aspect, not the story and, once it lets the player out into that world, it’s quite enthralling.  So, I don’t envisage ever selling it on that basis.

A more encouraging parallel is both of the new AC games, as each of those was rather difficult at the start, but each got easier as they went on and just about every account suggests the same is true for Ghost, despite the difference of no level gating in its design.

Changing tack, as to the bad stealth AI, it’s a bit weird but I’m not inclined to object to it – I’m quite happy with the AI being dumb!  Have also heard that it doesn’t do the hive mind alert, which will be very refreshing if it is so.

Generally, games are made for the majority of people, and for the majority of people, the game systems will work fine.  Me? I’ve certain individual quirks but they’re not transferable.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Of course I did!

I plan on writing a post along the lines of encouraging you not to drop this. But, its 8.30am in the morning.

Honestly, I dont share any of your criticisms. The only one of them im inclined to support is your comment about the AI in stealth, which I habe read is a bit shit but not something ive encountered.

Particularly, for me, the combat and tracking works fine. The combat has a learning curve and you are not expected to master it out of the gate. Thankfully there appears to be no penalty whatsoever for dying- you simply restart at the same checkpoint 30 seconds previous without any lost resources or anything. It also gives you the iption to avoid the encounter.

Theres a lot about this which feels like Assassins Creed (which you love) so im hoping youll be open to learning to play the game how its asking to be played.

Mind you, im only 2 or so hours in but have fone the first 3 “character” Tales.

Ben wrote:

Given my idea of stealth is waltzing up with a bazooka….

Im guessing youve unlocked focused hearing which gives you a good idea how the stealth mechanic appears to work. Frankly, it appears to be far easier to stealth kill enemies then in AC:O.

I would give this a legitimate shot Ben. There is always a learning curve with games and that doesnt necessarily mean “bad” sometimes it can just mean “unfamiliar”. But I will comment on your specific concerns in an encouraging way after Ive played a little more today.

For whar its worth, I have found the camera and combat timing an initial challenge, but it feels like something that will become instinctual after more than a few hours.

Also, scrolling through the unlockables – it does look like endgame Jin will be a similarly overtooled badass like Alexandria in AC:O so maybe thats worth thinking about too.

Right now, I’m most interested in grabbing a load of flowers to unlock some kit options.

I’m not really convinced the difficulty I had with that opening section really applies to the rest of the game save in one respect.  I  think the problem I have with the whole unblockable-attack-that-must-be-dodged thing is the dodge relies on getting the left / right direction correct, which can be difficult when in full 3D shifting combat – it’s why I like the look of the roll move.

I’ll likely do with the insta-fail stealth sections what I did on the first one, nab a guide and just get through them that way.

Because the bulk of the game is as polished as it is, those times when it does something that’s fractionally less so stands out a bit more.

Looking at the map, I’ll likely do another intro mission tomorrow then do lots of exploring because it’s that large.  And if a few bandits or mongols get in the way….

There is one major Q that you can answer definitively Tim: How does the combat here compare to Jedi: Fallen Order?

Ben wrote:

I’m not really convinced the difficulty I had with that opening section really applies to the rest of the game save in one respect.  I  think the problem I have with the whole unblockable-attack-that-must-be-dodged thing is the dodge relies on getting the left / right direction correct, which can be difficult when in full 3D shifting combat – it’s why I like the look of the roll move.

Yeah, this is what i was refferring to about combat timing. Parrying too.

I will be trying to use both but may have a leg up because both mechanisms exist in a similar fashion in Sekiro (and are much MUCH less forgiving there) and I love the feel that it gives to the combat. Particularly fiven the japanese mastery of movenent underpinning

I think its just learning. Typically in these types of game ypu never master the timing fully but it feels really good that time when you do execute the counters.

To be fair to the game, I’ve already blocked far more often and effectively than I expected to with various grunts.  The speed of the controls’ response is amazing – Jin is one fast fighter.

And yeah, anyone who has played Sekiro or Nioh should find this easier.

I did run into one of the mythic tales I wasnt prepared for (quite annoying because thete was no indication of the expected character progress requirement) so ill come back to it when ive improved my equipment and built my health/resolve a little bit.

It did shaft me all the way back to the start of that tale when I quit, which was not what I was expecting (I was expecting it to freeze it at the last “checkpoint”)

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.

[Ben]

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 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.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Ben.

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Dave

The Castlevania Anniversary Collection is currently £4 on the Switch eShop. That’s 50p a game! Or ~57p a game and nothing for Castlevania: The Adventure!

For those that don’t know, it has:
Castlevania 1-3 (NES)
Super Castlevania 4 (SNES)
Castlevania: The Adventure and Belmont’s Revenge (GB)
Castlevania: Bloodlines (Mega Drive)
Kid Dracula (Famicom – first English translation). It also has a digital book thing and Japanese versions of all but II.

Yeah the game gets a lot easier when you put sone effort into building your gear and techniques.

Id suggest looking at the ones that can parry the unblockables and the concentration ones for the bow. It makes everything a lot easier. Boosting up.that armour set too. I have mime at level 3 already.

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Ben

Ben wrote:

There is one major Q that you can answer definitively Tim: How does the combat here compare to Jedi: Fallen Order?

Its better here.

I had problems with Fallen Order that turned out to be more to do with my controller beimg on its last legs than the game being sticky and ive since got a new one.

Jedi is fine, but theres only a handful of lightsaber fights in the game which allow the counterung to shine. Theres also no dodge counter like there is hete, only parry.

Fuck i love parrying and dodging dudes in this though. Stepping to the side of an angry mongol warrior and then felling them with a single overhead strike is not getting old.

I need to use the ghost weapons and stances more. The kunai are really handy.

Yeah, I had a pair of brutes to deal with – Kunai to the throat really sped it up.

Get the sticky bomb!

Oh, I have it – just haven’t tried it out!

It might be thought that the stand-off couldn’t get more epic, but nailing the double is superb – haven’t yet upgraded it to three.

I’m loving the dodge strike. Guy attacks, evade and then slash.  Would have been a damn sight easier doing the Heavenly Strike quest with the new gear – didn’t have it at the time.

One of the things that is so deceptively fun is following foxes – don’t think anyone saw that one being so popular.

The Tayadoshis Armour qurst was the mythic quest i was talking about.

I wouldnt attempt it until youve at least unlocked conventration for the bow and upgraded the samyrai clan armour at least once.

Having mpte health and resolve is probably wise too. Theres a rush at the end.

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Ben

Ben wrote:

One of the things that is so deceptively fun is following foxes – don’t think anyone saw that one being so popular.

I’d have forseen the fox fun. Don’t be going bazooka stealth-waltzing after the foxes.

They’re too cute to bazooka! Mongols, however….

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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 shite 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 fucking 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.

Over the weekend I really got into the demo version of 51 Worldwide Games on the Switch. The demo or “Guest Multiplayer Version” has four of the 51 games available in it: Slot Cars, which is just scalextric, something I don’t find all that interesting anyway and that I don’t think translates well to video games; Connect 4; Dominoes, which is the actually game, not just placing them and knocking them over; and President.

That’s the one that’s really hooked me. It’s a card game very similar to Shithead, which I used to play most lunchtimes when I was in 6th form (I’d refrain from swearing, but I was astonished to find when looking it up that Shithead is actually its most common and proper name. I had assumed for years it was a slang name for something else). President feels like its more refined cousin, or most likely the stuffier game that Shithead was bastardised from. Doesn’t flow quite as well and it includes features to make it easier for the leading player to stay in the lead (which I guess ties into the name), which I’d rather weren’t there, but it’s quite fun.

I had dismissed this out of hand when it was released, I only got the demo on a whim, but it’s definitely convinced me to get the full version, if only to try out Shogi and Mancala. The demo version also lets you join in for multiplayer (local and online) with someone who has the full version, for all games, which is pretty sweet, so I can see this being handy for games nights. It also lets you watch all the, rather cute, introductions for each game, which is a smart move.

Andrew wrote:

Tim wrote:
Ive played all the Farcrys except for 4, Primal and New Dawn.

I’m telling you as someone who loved FC3 and played it twice in a row (I don’t usually do that), that FC4 is just as good (if not better). Which made FC5 even more of a letdown.

Oh I missed this.

So I have this weird thing about playing earlier entries of series ive played later entries of – I rarely do it.

Ive had long discussions with some friends about it. Like i played Shadow of War but not Shadow of Mordor. I skipped over Batman Arkham Origins. Im very apprehensive about playing earlier iterations for some reason – not sure why. I just dont do it.

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Andrew

Martin Smith wrote:

That’s the one that’s really hooked me. It’s a card game very similar to Shithead, which I used to play most lunchtimes when I was in 6th form (I’d refrain from swearing, but I was astonished to find when looking it up that Shithead is actually its most common and proper name. I had assumed for years it was a slang name for something else). President feels like its more refined cousin, or most likely the stuffier game that Shithead was bastardised from.

Shithead is one of those games that everyone seems to know but which gets played with loads of different (local?) variations.

We always played that 2s reset, 3s mirror, 7s reverse direction, 8s skip a turn, 9s must be followed lower rather than higher, and 10s burn – with 2s, 3s and 10s able to be played on anything.

It’s a cracking game, we play it with our kids often these days.

The Far Cry games were on discount on Steam… but I decided not to buy them, since I have a gigantic backlog anyways… I should’ve gotten FC3 though, it was really cheap, I don’t know if it’ll get an 85% again… Oh well…

Dave wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

That’s the one that’s really hooked me. It’s a card game very similar to Shithead, which I used to play most lunchtimes when I was in 6th form (I’d refrain from swearing, but I was astonished to find when looking it up that Shithead is actually its most common and proper name. I had assumed for years it was a slang name for something else). President feels like its more refined cousin, or most likely the stuffier game that Shithead was bastardised from.

Shithead is one of those games that everyone seems to know but which gets played with loads of different (local?) variations.

We always played that 2s reset, 3s mirror, 7s reverse direction, 8s skip a turn, 9s must be followed lower rather than higher, and 10s burn – with 2s, 3s and 10s able to be played on anything.

It’s a cracking game, we play it with our kids often these days.

Wow, you had a lot of special cards! We had 7s as transparent, 10 burns and 2 resets, I think.

I think I’ve played it once since sixth form, with friends I was at school with, and it felt like a failed attempt at recapturing the old magic.

Presumably you’re not calling it “shithead” with your kids?

The version I used to play in sixth form had just 10s, 2s and 9s I think. Our current version pulls in every special card that my wife and I have ever seen used in the various variations, which is probably too many.

I’ve also seen variations where players start with more than three sets of face-down/face-up cards, as many as five or six depending on the number of players.

Martin Smith wrote:

Presumably you’re not calling it “shithead” with your kids?

Er…

We tried to get away with calling it something else, but that lasted about five minutes and they wheedled its real name out of us.

Today’s Ghost of Tsuschima session included:

• Taking out random mobs of 5-6 enemies in less than 30 seconds, if swords and shields; bit longer for spears, but they all ended the same – Jin was the last man standing.
• Had a fight in a shipyard 8-on-1, it was over in an awesome couple of minutes.
• As part of destroying that shipyard, also nailed 3-4 headshots on a group, with the third level bow.
• Took over a lighthouse – involved killing a lot of Mongols.
• Got a few upgrades – resolve, charms, bow, armour, sword.
• Been un-fogging the map, rescuing peasants – and sometimes a successful standoff.
• Pulling off a trio standoff is very, very epic – tricky, but very, very epic.
• Still not got around to experimenting with bombs, killing with a katana is too much fun.

Dave wrote:

The version I used to play in sixth form had just 10s, 2s and 9s I think. Our current version pulls in every special card that my wife and I have ever seen used in the various variations, which is probably too many.

I’ve also seen variations where players start with more than three sets of face-down/face-up cards, as many as five or six depending on the number of players.

Martin Smith wrote:

Presumably you’re not calling it “shithead” with your kids?

Er…

We tried to get away with calling it something else, but that lasted about five minutes and they wheedled its real name out of us.

We used to scale up and down the amount of hole cards depending on how many were playing. I think we stretched to one card each once, to accommodate about 9 players. They were big ol’ tables in my sixth form centre.

One cool thing in 51 Worldwide Games actually is that it lets you adjust special cards like that as you want. President has options for 3 of spades being able to follow Jokers, 8 as a burn card, suit restrictions (if two or two cards of the same suit are played by successive players, everyone else is locked into using the same suit until the next pass) and Downfall (where if the player ranked 1st in the last round doesn’t win the next, they automatically come fourth, which is important with the pre-round card swapping). They can all be individually toggled on and off for a lot of flexibility.

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Dave

[Ben]

So, er, Ghost of Tsuschima…. Holy fuck, did it go up several gears today.

First, there was Komatsu Forge mission, which was a mostly good mix of covert and overt combat, though the last bit did show up some weaknesses in the game’s lack of indicators as to where enemies are, when you’re in an open battle in a complex environment.  Still, the usual solution pf “kill ’em all” worked just fine.  It’s one of the few game missions where the people you escort are reasonably smart and you have a fair amount of latitude as to how you get from A to B.  I’m not a fan of the skull icon idea, but the time allocated is pretty generous, at least on Easy, which is just as well as Jin ain’t that fast at times.

Next, did some random, took out some outposts, killed some leaders, which is where it went surreal.  On one outpost, just as I was to be stealthy, a load of bandits stormed it, mass brawl, fine, fuck stealth, kill ’em all. On another camp, just as I surveyed two bears waltzed in, so I let them kill 80% of the troops then killed the last bear standing and mopped up the rest, which included a Leader observation.  The combined effect of these activities meant that I unlocked the Wind stance! The significance of this? Read on.

Since the start, there has been one enemy that is a pain in the arse.  Swords? Mostly straight-forward.  Shields? Bit trickier but yeah, mostly fine.  Brutes? Vulnerable to hit-and-run.  No, the one enduring bastard enemy has been the spear guys. …. Until now.  Wind stance allows Jin to really screw these guys over.  Some of the fights that followed after unlocking were insane, with Jin just working through sword, shield and spear enemies with an awesome level of ease!

At the same time I got the Half Bow fully upgraded!  Fully upgraded, it is lethal. But this is no longer my only bow, no, I now have the Longbow and the Longbow has… Heavy and Explosive Arrows!  You can now explode a Leader, set them on fire, after being mostly charred, they try to find you, but they are seriously weakened.  One Leader I did this to, then took out with the glorious death from above assassination!

This all lead up to the most epic mission so far – Unfinished Business.  Where you return to Azamo Bay.  What follows is a really smart and freeform mix of overt and covert combat, over a large, complex environment, with numerous objectives.  It’s a hugely satisfying mission, culminating in a duel.

Talking of which, was able to really enjoy the last two duels.  The Azamo Bay one was a good way to conclude a truly epic mission while the duel for the Longbow, also really emphasies that Jin is the medieval Japanese Batman.

Other stuff – have Kunai and bomb supply fully upgraded, almost all of the Longbow ammo, got all the charms for the Sakai Katana and have the Longbow partially upgraded.

Sure, there’s been times when I’m sure I selected a different stance to the one Jin was in, but due to the armour and health upgrades, he can take the odd hit now.  But when it works?  The stance system is genius, even I can mostly pull it off!

So, er, yeah.  Having quite a time.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Ben.

I’ve started playing Mega Man Battle Network tonight. I played the second one way back when it came out, but none since.

It’s a fun breezy, action RPG. There’s no real levelling in it, just the odd stat upgrade and mainly attacks you get from beating enemies quickly and finding them in the wild. While that sounds shallow the upside is no grinding! You can just go through at whatever pace you want, if you’re not desperate for new attacks.

Combat’s quite fun. It’s on a 3×6 grid, split in two, half for Mega Man, half for enemies. You can move freely in your half, firing Mega Man’s basic weapon while a meter refills allowing you access to special attack “chips”. The traditional Mega Man formula comes into play here, as you can get chips that emulate normal enemies and summon other “Net Navis”.

All of this is bound up in a simplistic story of the internet being attacked by terrorists (the WWW), to be foiled by a 10 year old kid, Lan, and his Net Navi Mega Man. Lots of going to school and what not. It’s an interesting counterpoint to Pokemon (which was an influence on this series) as Lan’s adventures are all rooted in his hometown, compared to the vagabond Pokemon trainers.

Fucking good-for-nothing wastrel Pokemon Trainers.

Ash, that waster.  Don’t get me started on Misty.

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Martin Smith

Ben wrote:

At the same time I got the Half Bow fully upgraded!

It’s funny how playstyles.  Differ I’ve been putting effort into building up the Katana (its now at the second highest rank) and have more or less ignored the bows.

That was until today where I did a couple of “liberate the farmstead” missions and took great pleasure in sniping practically all the mongols from my hiding space in the pampas grass.

I haven’t got a handle on everything – the wind chimes and firecrackers don’t make any sense to me – but it’s a pretty good arsenal.  The changing stances is becoming more intuitive, but not so much the changing to the ghost weapons.  Having to change out the bow to the hand, and then change the hand to the firecracker for example feels really clunky.  Maybe I’ll get used to it.

Anyway, glad you’re enjoying it Ben.  It’s a really pretty game but the thing I like most of all is the combat and the parrying.  This is particularly important in the duels (which conversely to you I really like) and I’ve also got a pretty good handle on the standoffs (although, I have now encountered some enemies who have less familiar animations and I’m finding them much trickier to standoff against).

I think I’m a bit further than you (judging by our trophies) so I’m curious to hear what you think when you get to the end of Act 1.

That could be some time away as I’m not rushing it and there’s still loads of the map I’ve yet to visit.  It’s giving HZD strong competition on map density.

The map is quite beautiful to traverse. Im technically on the second area but only because I didnt realise the second area would open up when it did -theres only a handful of story missions you need to do ti open it up which means theres tons of side content still to do in “Act 1”.

One of the best things about it is taking your horse slowly across a hill – any hill – in kurosawa mode. The epitome of wandering samurai.

Another best thing is photo mode.

Photo mode is actually a good time. You make art!

Anonymous wrote:

Another best thing is photo mode.

Photo mode is actually a good time. You make art!

Like Pokemon Snap except more arty.
Plus from what I hear, Ghost photo mode is easier than trying to capture puppy portraits.

 

 

 

OMG I SHOULD DO PHOTOS OF THE FOXIES!

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Ben