thepaulhoey

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Posts posted by thepaulhoey


  1. This is George "Plants V Zombies" Fan's latest game, it came out on Steam the other day.

     

    Overall I'm enjoying it, the art is lovely, the soundtrack is incredibly catchy and fun and the gameplay is interesting and challenging without being too frustrating. I haven't completed it yet, it's not a typical level by level affair in that if you lose all 3 lives you're at the start of the game again and creating your octopus from scratch again. I'm also not going to call it a roguelight because it isn't really. I'm mixed on this and I think I'd have preferred a level by level affair where I create my octopus before each level. My main reason is that playing the earlier levels can get incredibly boring, going from a 6 tentacle wrecking machine taking on a screenful of enemies to a 2 tentacle rubbish octopus taking out rubbish enemies is a big change in pace. There's also a bit of a fear to experiment more as well, as decisions are something you have to stick with for this play through. OK you can replace what's on a tentacle but if you just spent 900 coins on something you don't want to replace it one level later, there's no good way to try out an upgrade. In PvZ for instance if you buy something you find out in 2 minutes it's useless on this level and you can try again. Another issue I'm having is that I'm in the middle of a run with really bad choices(the game gives you 3 random upgrades you can buy between each level), 5 levels in I still hadn't gotten anything that could fire a projectile and it just made things really tough. That's not to mention the upgrades I unlocked using shells that I'm yet to see. I just quit now because (item/enemy spoiler)

    I had an option to buy the angler fish about 4 levels ago when there was no invisible enemies, haven't had a chance since and I'm on my second level with invisible enemies now so it's incredibly difficult. I really don't think you should have to buy a useless upgrade levels before it's needed for fear you won't be able to buy it again.

    . Honestly I feel like I'm playing a bonus mode rather than a polished campaign, I think a traditional 25 or so levels with you building your octopus before each one would work better to have you learn about the upgrades and level, then have this go from start to the end with random upgrades thing be a bonus mode.

     

    It still gets a recommendation from me, but I think there's a slightly better game hidden in there.


  2. No trailer has ever gotten me as excited for a game's release as this GTA V trailer: 

     

    It's just perfect, the way they play off of the song to build it up and the small pieces of info you can gleam about the plot. I've watched it so many times.

     


  3. That Punch Out run is incredibly impressive, must have taken a lot of practice.

     

    It's all over for another 6 months! Some of the highlights for me were Resident Evil 7, good interesting run and great commentary. Breath of the Wild, surprisingly interesting run. It's about 4 hours long though as they complete all main quests. DKC2 race was good, lots of back and forth on the leader.

     

    Still making my way through what I missed. still to watch are SMW race, LttP race, Mega Man relay, MGS 1 & 3, DKC.


  4. I installed BioShock Infinite and played through the first two areas. It really is a rather good shooter, the controls feel great and it's just a ridiculous amount of fun, I'll keep playing and see how I feel about it in 7 or 8 hours though, because I'm racking up new skills fast so I don't know that they're well spread out. It still looks absolutely stunning, some of the best art from a technical and aesthetic point of view I've seen in a game. Not remotely what I expect from a game with "Shock" on the title though, if this was done outside of the franchise I don't think people would have been so critical.


  5. From memory, it was delayed a few times and about a year before it was released a producer who had worked on Gears of War was brought in to make sure it was finished and released on time. The earlier footage seems like a very different game, far less linear for a start and I think you can tell that what was delivered wasn't what was started. There's many parts of a more open game still lying around, totally out of place. It's another FPS that was a victim to what was in vogue, a 2 weapon system is brought in, there's needless spectacle, more set pieces etc. Comparing it to the rest of Irrational Games catalogue it's somewhat out of place, it's about as straight up of an FPS as they've ever made. 2K Games wanted to build a massive household franchise out of what was a fluke as far as mainstream appeal goes in the immersive sim genre and they wound up getting a frankenstein that wasn't the runaway hit they wanted(it sold really well, but I bet it wasn't cheap to make) or the continuation of the series fans wanted.

     

    I had a look at my comments about it from the time and I say I really enjoyed it but I've never gone back to it since. I played both of the DLCs and the first was an interesting idea executed poorly and the second one was actually quite good overall. Do you have the DLC?


  6. Horizon: Zero Dawn, I'm pretty sure I've unlocked the final mission but I'm just not having fun anymore, and really haven't been for the past 3 hours of it. I think Guerilla's inexperience of open world games is on full display here, nothing really comes together well for me. The game world looks incredible, it's one of the most beautiful games I've ever played but it's seriously let down by the gameplay. Fighting huge robo dinosaurs is awesome, strategically picking off their various components to weaken them etc. is an incredible experience, but these battles are few and far between. More often you're fighting 3 or 4 weaker enemies which you've already killed 10 times before in similar battles and it just gets tedious, but you kinda need to kill them to get XP to get the better abilities which you'll need for the larger enemies. There's a few iffy things in combat, with foliage often obstructing your view when you're aiming up and with Aloy getting caught on small rocks in the ground and finally having to rescan enemies to expose weak points, they mar what is otherwise some rather fun combat. Nothing in the game world is really important or particularly distinct, every vendor sells the same items, side quests are boring and don't have interesting rewards. The main story is incredibly weak I thought, for all the praise I've heard for it. I got so sick of going to some ruins and standing around listening to exposition after exposition. They manage to do everything you shouldn't do when trying to get someone invested in a story, most of it is about people who aren't there, no one cares about people you don't know and see up front and centre, the few times it focuses in on Aloy are interesting but disjointed. She at times risks everything to help the Nora and then 2 minutes later yells at them for outcasting her and how she doesn't care about them. A lot of the lore is trite humans created what destroyed them nonsense. I was going to see it through to the end but after another journey through an exposition filled ruin I've given up. I think there's great potential here but for me the game never really rose above mediocrity.


  7. Last night they had a speed running tutorial for Strider, it was really cool to see them take someone who had never speed run a game before and teach him a few tricks and the route to take in the space of 30 minutes. Awesome to see them do something do which gives more insight into how you get into speed running in the first place.


  8. 9 hours ago, Merus said:

    I did like the comment I saw from one of the Vlambeer guys that said that he'd really like it if GDQ players would stop sarcastically saying that the game was well-programmed when they exploited a bug.

     

    Yes this drives my flatmate and me mad, it wasn't funny the first time, it won't be funny the 1,000th time. Some of the runners are really annoying to listen to.

     

    I saw the second half of the Super Mario 3D World run last night, some really cool skips in that which exploit the World map being one huge map that's streamed in an out.


  9. Looking forward to watching that, it was on too late for me to catch live.

     

    The Skyrim run was fun, full of glitches but interesting and baffling glitches. And a couple of crashes.


  10. A few that seem like they could be entertaining(some because I've never seen them before):

     

    Batman: Arkham Asylum

    Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong's Quest (Race)

    Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (European Extreme)

    Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

    Super Mario Sunshine (120 shines)

    Dishonored (All collectibles so I'm hoping it's not a glitch fest like I've seen before)

    Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos

    Super Mario World (Race)

     

    Generally I'm a fan of races and not of glitchy runs where most of it is jumping into a piece of geometry to get out of bounds or something. A bit of that is cool but I think the last time I saw a Dishonored run that was done at the start of every level and everything was skipped, it gets a bit tired for me after a few levels.

     

    Wonder what impact the lack of Kill/Save the animals will have on the money raised, I'm just glad I won't have to listen to the same boring comments related to that goal this time!


  11. I bought an Oculus a few weeks ago as it was going for £350 on Amazon, which was low enough to make me finally bite. There's some great experiences with it and a lot of really mediocre stuff as well and I think it's still not quite wide consumer ready in the current state.

     

    Software

    The main problem for me isn't the hardware, it's the software. The Oculus Launcher thing can be incredibly sluggish and unresponsive to your actions e.g. launching a game, quitting a game, opening a menu, there can be seconds before it responds to what you've picked and it's just frustrating. Then there's games crashing when loading but only displaying an error message on your monitor, so you've got the headset on and you're wondering why it's taking so long so you have to take it off and have a look at the screen. Also the fact that the software crashes enough that this is a problem. I've had a few weird rendering errors in games where I was getting a bizarre ghosting going on at times which made things totally unplayable. Overall as with anything in its early days there's plenty of teething issues.

     

    Controls

    Aside from those more technical imperfections, the controls are another area where developers still have a ways to go. So I'm not using room scale, I simply don't have the space for it(and I think a lot of people will be in the same situation as me) and a lot of games claim to work OK in non- room scale but they simply don't. Take Rick & Morty VR as an example, you need to turn in 360 degrees but without a third camera the Oculus can't track that very well, with the controller signal being blocked. This makes trying certain things basically impossible. A really simple solution is to allow you to rotate with the analogue stick in 90 degree increments but R&M like many other games don't implement this. Another issues I've encountered a lot is the floor being calibrated incorrectly, basically when I crouch to pick something off the floor my hand is hitting the floor in real life but the object in the game world is about 6 inches lower so I can't pick it up. Many games have lots of little issues like this, I'm sure things will improve over time. Some stand out games in terms of controls are Robo Recall which does teleportation very well and Arizona Sunshine which has direct movement via the analogue stick implemented in a way that doesn't give me motion sickness! It's very impressive and some of the levels make great use of you having your two hands moving freely, like exploring a mine using a torch. I tried Alien Isolation with the MotherVR mod and it's incredibly immersive but made me feel very sick. I'll try again, maybe I've built up some immunity now.

     

    Overall

    If you're a tech geek go for it, as far as I can tell unless you have a 16ft * 16ft area for room scale the Oculus is the better option because it's about half the price. If you're expecting something that's polished with some proper games, you'll be disappointed because most of the games are still very short and some are pretty much just fucking about(Rick & Morty, Job Simulator, Accounting) rather than a proper interesting challenge.

     

    I've still got a bunch more games to play, Raw Data looks great as does LA Noire(which keeps crashing despite me meeting the requirements :(). I'm hoping it continues to improve because it's a really neat technology and it can be incredibly immersive.


  12. I finished this this morning, I was actually surprised I was finished so soon, only 8 hours according to Steam and it really didn't feel like the story had hit any sort of stride. The combat was enjoyable, more of the same as the last one with similar problems but at no point did I feel invested in any of what was going on, it never felt like there was a clear plan of what was going to be done.

     

    We were just picking up random militia leaders who served no purpose come the end of the game, nothing that happened required these people, it all felt very pointless and not a lot got developed. I get that they're starting a revolution and all but you don't get to see any of it, I thought that might be the final act but nope, we kill Engel and that's it. I also sound it incredibly cut scene heavy in a bad way where I felt like I was playing a MGS game at times, sitting at my desk waiting to be given some scraps of gameplay for sitting through flashy but hollow cut scenes. The tone was all over the place as well, the new characters were all these sort of sterotypical American rights activists but in an overly comedic way, while BJ's story was generally played seriously(similar to the first game). I think they went much too far in a comedic direction at times and I don't think it works.


  13. On 11/20/2017 at 8:00 PM, twmac said:
    • Blaskowiecz now picks up some content when he walks past it but not all, I can understand the design decision for this  but it just slows down the game in a way that detracts

     

    I still can't, I just don't get it at all. It's not fun and just needlessly makes me mash pickup as I walk around.

     

    @Nappi That was the absurd difficulty spike I mentioned earlier, that section was just rubbish.

     

    I'll probably get back to this at the weekend, I haven't played it in a few weeks because it just wasn't grabbing me.


  14. 16 hours ago, Badfinger said:

    I have now completed the game. It ended really well, I'm very glad I loaded it back up and more or less mainlined the last 3-4 worlds. The ending sequence was great, I was smiling almost the entire time. The kingdom you unlock after finishing was worth running around in.

     

    The kingdom you unlock with enough moons though...

     

      Hide contents

    A boss rush? Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME. I think I'm done with the game.

     

    In low gravity! Took me a few attempts, was actually really easy when I realised I could stun the downed bosses with my hat which made landing my jumps on them was much simpler. You unlock some more levels after the boss rush but it's still a rather disappointing unlock.


  15. Yes, they should. The Uncharted games are a great example of difficulty levels affecting this. On higher difficulty levels you're incredibly fragile so you just keep hiding in cover and taking pot shots and it's really boring and tedious. I always knock the difficulty down in those games so I can run around spraying bullets at enemies, finishing them with punches, swing from platform to platform gunning enemies down as I go along. It's super fun playing this way but the difficulty is designed in a way to force you to use the cover system. It baffles me. Even right now in Wolfenstein the best way to get past a level I was stuck on was to hide behind a box taking pot shots at enemies until they were all gone, not remotely fun but playing it by running around gunning down the enemies just got me killed all the time.

     

    I'd say Dishonored does a bad job of getting you to play in the most fun way(a la those videos) with the impact killing enemies has on the story. It's not severe but the game certainly guilts you over it. In fact any game that lets you murder your way through it but tuts at you for it is doing a bad job I think.

     

    In recent memory Doom 2016 does the best job of forcing you to play in the most fun way possible.


  16. I think the sequel improves the AI so that they're not so easily manipulated. They'll take their time coming at you, they won't mindlessly follow one after another into traps etc. I think it's similar in BioShock in that regard, they give you so much freedom that it's easy to find an exploit that works well and you have to actively choose not to do it to maintain some level of fun in the game.


  17. Yes some of the post-credits content is very difficult, to the degree that I've left the game alone for a few days because of a frustrating Koopa race I can't complete. I do find the more advanced controls a little iffy at times, particularly diving where sometimes I feel like Mario is going a direction different to where my analogue stick is pointing or I wind up ground pounding instead of diving(inexcusable given how many buttons on the controller go unused this shouldn't be doubled up). Most of my time with the game has been post-credits, I'm at 630+ Moons now and I've got one more to go on the Lost Island Kindom, all the other Kingdoms up to that point I've gotten all the Moons and coins on. I'm not usually a completionist but I mostly really enjoy it in this. Except those bullshit Koopa races :P


  18. I'm finding this OK, I think as a sequel I'm disappointed they haven't learned anything. The stealth as mentioned is still wonky and there's times where it feels like total luck if you'll walk around a corner into full view of an enemy, it's really not designed with much ability to work out patrol routes etc. There's still horrible difficulty spikes and deaths that come out of nowhere because the hit feedback is a bit tame so you don't notice your health is draining very fast. I think there's way too many cut scenes so far, I don't give a damn about most of what's happening because it's so slow and drawn out I just want to go shoot Nazis! It's like the anti-Doom 2016 in that regard, it's everything it poked fun at.

     

    The guns still feel nice, the graphics are sublime and the level design is quite nice even if the enemy encounters a bit hit and miss. Gameplay wise though it feels more like a mission pack than a sequel interested in moving things on, they've probably played it too safe.

     

    An example of the absurd difficulty spikes:

     

    I'm at the top of the State building and I have to fend off some Nazis. I've died maybe three times up to this point in the game and now I can barely survive 20 seconds. I start with my health at 50 and no health packs nearby to boost it and I've very little armour. I've got 2 light machine guns equipped which are totally inadequate so at the start I have to mash 3 to equip dual machine guns, but the enemies start streaming in as soon as it loads so there's nearly no time to. There's loads of explosive canisters around which the enemies make use of, but you need to move around to get into cover etc. so it's really easy to be near one and have it explode which is an instant death. Just awful.