I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

[Zeusthecat]

Anyone who loves the music in Chrono Cross as much as I do will appreciate this article: http://tay.kinja.com/the-amazing-music-of-chrono-cross-1724009925

 

Edit: Damn link is acting weird. The article is available on the left sidebar on that page.

[Dewar]

I bought Chrono Cross on my PS3 last year with the intention to replay it, but still haven't gotten around to it.

[Bjorn]

Microsoft released a new "Mad World" trailer for the GoW remastered collection...and whoever cut this thing together either had no idea what made the original commercial great, or had some bullshit mandate from executives to make sure it had all the hip murder scenes that kids love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwbYhvlrQbc

[Dewar]

I'd wager both.

 

I remember how much I used to love Gears of War. I didn't even play Judgement to complain about that, it just felt like the whole thing ended on a flat tire. At least it took an unnecessary sequel in Halo 4 for me to lose interest there.

[SecretAsianMan]

I don't think the trailer is quite as bad as most people are making it out to be, but it's definitely not nearly as good as the first one.  Gears of War was the game that convinced me to get a 360 and Gears 2 horde mode almost single handedly justified Xbox Live for me.  I kind of soured on the series by 3 and never played Judgement.

[Bjorn]

Between the campaign and horde mode in 2, I can't count how many hours I spent playing it.  3 felt really off to me in multiple ways, and we skipped judgement. 

[rohlfinator]

Improved version: http://crossfade.io/#!/ap5xp1cjvp

[Griddlelol]

I've been thinking about combat in difficult games after playing a bunch of dark souls 2.

My character has toppled giants, stabbed dragons to death and pummelled great knights into the ground. Yet she runs away when there are 3 sword wielding nobodies charging. It doesn't make sense! How can a designer get around this issue without making individual hollows/goblins/whatever trivial?

Bayonetta has you annihilating multiple small enemies without issue, and they only become a threat in large numbers, or when accompanying something more substantial. It makes sense within the narrative, but loses the difficulty. I feel like it's s little closer to how it should be, but the game is so different that it can't translate to others.

I wonder if designers think about this when making such a game. I wonder what unfeasible options they came up with that were never implemented were.

[Badfinger]

I played a MUD for a long-ass time that very definitely thought about this, took it into account, and implemented it in a mechanical way. All the parts of combat were skill based, augmented by a number of factors. So your offense was based on the number of levels you had in your weapon plus encumbrance, permanent stat points, armor hindrance, balance, and positioning. Your defense was based on whether you could parry, evasion, shield if you were using a shield, the amount of emphasis you placed on each of these, armor skill, armor effectiveness, and then also encumbrance, balance, etc.

 

THEN these factors were further influenced by spell boosts (usually buffs, but occasionally curses), injuries - external and internal wounds, bleeding, external and internal scars, nerve damage and scarring from the magic system, fatigue, overall advantage or disadvantage in combat.

 

THEN THEN these factors were influenced by positioning and number of opponents. There was very literally a combat skill called "multi-opponent" that wasn't ever directly applied, but influenced how well you could handle fighting more than one Thingie at a time. So if you could totally take on one Rock Troll with no trouble, that didn't necessarily mean that two Rock Trolls was only slightly more difficult. If you were facing one, but the other one was flanking you, that had a different impact than if it was behind you. If you had only ever done combat in a way that you rarely fought more than one opponent, you might be in serious trouble if you didn't really quickly kill something when a second one showed up. And that's how one dragon is easy to handle but three goblins is a corpse run.

 

I think at some point they got rid of the Multi Opponent skill, either replacing it or rolling it into something else. It wasn't additive and hard to train properly at level.

[Mawd]

Maybe surprise is as much a factor as difficulty? I thought that with DS2 (haven't tried Scholar or the expansions) the big enemies were generally advertised quite well and even when not they were kinda ponderous so you could hear the clank clank of their boots as the wound up for a great sword king hit while you sidestepped a shield guy and a crowssbow quarrel.

With the smaller nobodies they're generally quick and even though they do comparatively less damage their combos can easily stun lock you for the buddies to also get a full knife/shiv combo off.

I'm thinking places like the tree with the knight or the lost Bastille outside the sentinels.

With the bigger more epic guys you generally have more room, maybe some cover and you don't always have some quick grunts to appear and chase you around.

I think my favourite boss is the optional pursuer and I do it so much I've never played the fight by the ballistae. He's powerful and always surprisingly fast; enough to always make me super hesitant before choosing the fight.

I'm keen for DS3 primarily because it's adding in a combat system that I hope will make the big bads even scarier. Plus I'm so sad that Bloodbourne might not come out for PC and I kinda feel the same about Demon Souls.

[prettyunsmart]

I didn't know where else to put this, but I wanted to gush briefly about the map in Thief. I'm playing through the original game, as I had an urge to play an immersive sim and there don't seem to be any new ones coming out for a while.

 

Years ago, I had a demo disk with the tutorial and the first level on it, but I never picked up the full game. At the time, I never appreciated how great the game's maps are, both in practice and in fiction. They're these wonderfully abstract drawings of the levels that are usually justified as coming from someone you know who visited the level before. They're vague enough that you need to explore quite a bit on your own, but specific enough that you can orient yourself based on the level geometry and your compass. The map highlights your general location without giving you a specific "you are here" dot, which helps balance things between total abstraction and a line on the ground that tells you where to go. Now if only it was an actual piece of paper Garrett pulled out of his pocked like in Far Cry 2...

[Griddlelol]

A PS3 is £50 on eBay. Demon's Souls is £10, dragons dogma is £2 and uncharted 2 is £1 (!!!) vanquish is £5.

I'm seriously considering buying a PS3 again since the price is so good. Are there any other gems I could get too? The only one in that list I've played is DeS but I'd like to play it again.

[syntheticgerbil]

Every Ratchet and Clank game!

[tberton]

Journey.

[Dewar]

Disgaea 3

[SuperBiasedMan]

Having a super computer.

[rohlfinator]

There's a lot of good PSN stuff -- Flower, Journey, Noby Noby Boy, Tokyo Jungle, etc. They've had some pretty good sales on PS3 games lately also.

[Mawd]

Little Big Planet?

[osmosisch]

Journey.

This (and Flower) are out on PS4 as well.

[Smart Jason]

If your mind isn't already made up about Quantic Dream games (Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls), I'd certainly recommend giving them both a fair try if you're the sort of person who happens to like branching narrative.

[miffy495]

The competitive Smash Bros thread contains the shorthand Sm4sh for the 4th game in the series. When reading this, my mind interpreted it as "Smorsh". That is all.

[N1njaSquirrel]

A PS3 is £50 on eBay. Demon's Souls is £10, dragons dogma is £2 and uncharted 2 is £1 (!!!) vanquish is £5.

I'm seriously considering buying a PS3 again since the price is so good. Are there any other gems I could get too? The only one in that list I've played is DeS but I'd like to play it again.

 

I'm totally late to this party, but Persona 3:FES is on the PS3 PSN store for £8, and it's a fantastic game if you've never played it. And also a damn sight cheaper than the £50 you have to pay for a ps2 copy.

[Valorian Endymion]

I think that you guys maybe already seen this but GoG have just, somehow, added a couple of classic AD&D game from SSi to their catalogue: http://www.gog.com/news/release_forgotten_realms_the_archives

So far everything they have added is the Forgotten Realm titles, which are spread in 3 packages - one with the Eye of the Beholder trilogy, another with Menzoberranzan and Dungeon Hack and a third with several more older games. Rumor says that the Dragonlance games are coming too and I wonder if the Ravenloft and Dark Sun games too. But to be fair, what I really want is they got hand on the Birthright Gorgon´s Alliance from Sierra, Birthright was my favorite campaign background (even I almost never could convince anyone to play it)..

 

Anyway - I have picked up the second package. Dungeon Hack still a fun game, good to have around while listening to a podcast. But what did surprise me was Menzoberranzan, despite age, still high playable, even if it use this very early 3D graphics and the adaptation of AD&D rules is really complete, the game feel like very ahead of its time.

[Mangela Lansbury]

I've started playing Go against a computer during my work day. I can usually get through one game in my downtime -- keep the board over in a corner of my screen and mull over moves through the day, clicking over to it while I can. I was doing this today when I had a bit of a weird thought.

Does playing Go on a computer against a computer count as playing a video game? I kind of want to say yes, but a part of me also wants to say no.

[namman siggins]

The new Three Moves Ahead podcast on Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat allowed me to find the game that's been eluding me for years: Warhammer: dark omen.

For the longest time I thought it was an early Legacy of Cain game I was playing, but no. NO! My memories lied to me and upon hearing TMA and image googling Horned Rat that it looks looked familiar. Further listening said there was a sequel to the game and lo and behold, I finally came across the game that's been haunting me for years: Dark Omen.

 

Man, I can't wait to play the shit out of it.