bkbroiler

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Posts posted by bkbroiler

  1. Posted

    Having played Dark Souls and Mount & Blade, Skyrim's melee combat feels really dull. Especially with dragons. Archery is fun, and I would look into magic mods. The latter doesn't feel tactical like I would want it to, but at least you can get it to look real pretty.

     

    Hmm... aside from one of the last story dungeons, I never found myself getting stuck. :erm:

    It's very possible that I'm just a stupid idiot. I will make sure I'm taking every vaguely quest related book now, too. :manny:

  2. Posted

    I think the general opinion is that Skyrim is a good game, but the more a game is loved the more eventual backlash there is going to be against it. I think generally people think it was a huge improvement on Oblivion.

     

    I wonder if anyone else has had this problem: I keep getting stuck in dungeons, quickly decide that I'm just going to look up what to do instead of figuring it out, and realizing that I didn't "take" a book to activate the next part of a quest, I only "read" it. That's some weird design, especially considering I just kind of automatically hit B after I'm done reading a book, not thinking there are other options.

  3. Posted

    Interesting you guys are talking about Skyrim, I just started playing that for the first time recently. I was completely uninterested it for the longest time because of how much I disliked Oblivion. I bought it for 5 bucks or something on a Steam sale a while back, and for some reason decided to start playing it a week ago or something.

     

    Well, I'm about 8 hours in and I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would. Maybe my expectations had been set properly or something, because once I got past the initial awkward story conversations (which seem to be universally no good), I'm having a lot of fun. I'm playing a sneaky bowman, and its fun to one shot an entire room before they see you. The leveling is way better than Oblivion, what with how using skills unlocks the ability to put points in specific perks when you get them from leveling.

     

    The game still seems like that "wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle" cliche that everyone says, but I'm enjoying it for what it is. Sometimes just listening to podcasts instead of the gameplay. I think if I was not playing with bows I would be feeling very different, because the brief bit of one handed swords and shields gameplay I played didn't feel good at all.

  4. Posted

    By and large, I thought this was a great movie. Then again, humor goes a long way with me. Chris Evans is a very charismatic actor, and love how his portrayal of Captain America comes of a genuine, good-humored, and a little aloof. I think the action in this movie was a little lacking, but one of the better Avengers-series movies out there for me.

     

    Also agreed about the Samuel L. gag at the end.

  7. Posted

    I really like positive reinforcement in games, even if it is largely meaningless. It's why I used to Prestige back when I played Call of Duty. I view RPG levels in a similar light, not just diablo. A buff of less than 1% to things (most post-20 RPG levels) is not really an actual thing, but I love clicking around and filling bars and so on.

    That's why those flash joke games about leveling up actually work, because people love filling bars. Even if you're doing nothing. Where is the sense of progression if you can't get to level 70? At 70 you still have paragon levels to fill, and at that point you can make meaningful strides in increasing your damage numbers. But up until then you need to get that constant level up to keep momentum going.

  9. Posted

    Everything in the game levels up with you now (right?) and there still aren't any stat points, so why even have levels? Okay, you unlock some skills, but it still feels like a weird artifact and not the kind of system someone would design if they started fresh.

    I can't imagine this game if you never leveled at all. 

  13. Posted

    you are aware that ghost can go through doors and walls

    Not if I systematically turn on every light in every room I enter and leave them on after leaving (closing the door of course). Then I just pick up every object that could trigger something while facing away from it, thus ensuring that nothing will spawn behind me.

     

    This is real life I'm talking about though, not video games

  14. Posted

    I love enchanting so much. It's so addicting. Really expensive, but I think that's a good thing.

     

    I've started selling most of my rares now, and once I started doing that I'm breaking even on money most of the time. I no longer craft every single gem up to its highest form anymore, since they start to get 200 and 300k to make just one.

  15. Posted

    This is only kind of a spoiler, but that kind of thing that Ben is talking about always makes me laugh.

     

    In a lot of Schafer adventure games, you only know you need something because the main character is obsessed with it. So like Manny LOOOOVES the metal detector, and there is no clear reason why. But the idea of Manny coming up to talk to Carla and just fixating on the metal detector cracks me up. And it lets you know you should get it for some reason! I'm not sure if that is good or bad game making, but I like it. The same thing happens in Broken Age at one point - I think the mayor of the sandcastle town has something that Vella fixates on.

  22. Posted

    I recently played DS3 and while most of it felt like a dull 3rd person shooter, I thought they were doing some neat things with the open area space sequences. Floating outside of stations and into wreckage was really enjoyable. Incredibly disappointed that they didn't do more with it though.

    Ah right, I remember Brad Shoemaker saying that the first bit is really fun, and then you go down to the ice planet and everything after that sucks. I think I'd rather just replay Dead Space 1 and 2 than play 3 at this point.

  23. Posted

    I never played Dead Space 3 because everything I heard about it seemed awful.

     

    What I like about Dead Space 2 is I think it nails the environments and atmosphere. I can remember 3 or 4 specific sections from that game, and I can't really remember anything specific about the first one, besides that awful asteroid shooting part. I think the lighting in particular is brilliant in Dead Space 2. 

     

    Like I said, I love them both. Arguments like "the first one is scarier and the second one is just a shooter!" Don't hold any water with me though because I didn't think the first one was that scary.

  24. Posted

    It's half the opposite, sort of: the writer of Far Cry 3 loves to talk about how smart and meta and subversive the narrative is but in actuality it's just a bunch of racism. More reading:

    http://killscreendaily.com/articles/interviews/why-player-side-killing-conversation-writer-far-cry-3/

    http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/criticalintel/10211-Far-Cry-3s-Citra-Is-Straight-From-the-Freakshow

    http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/12/19/far-cry-3s-jeffrey-yohalem-on-racism-torture-and-satire/

    http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/09/fire-away-spec-ops-far-cry-3-writers-on-criticizing-fps/

    http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/13/spec-ops-fc3-writers-on-whats-next-futurism-bioshock/

    http://gamechurch.com/guiding-lights-an-interview-with-far-cry-3-writer-jeffrey-yohalem/

    http://iam.benabraham.net/2012/12/far-cry-3-and-designer-inducements/

    I haven't looked at the Far Cry stuff in a while, but I remember it all seeming pretty desperate and grasping.