I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

[Griddlelol]

Well that's fucking cool.  I never played it, was always on my PS3 shortlist, just never got around to picking it up. 

 

It's good. Shame they screwed up with 2. 

[SecretAsianMan]

Does anyone else enjoy making goofy looking characters in games?

Aretha.jpgAretha_portrait.png

I know I do.

 

Well this happened last night.  Does that count?

 

[SuperBiasedMan]

Hell yes. I hope you somehow worked the name horsebag in as your crew title or something.

[Gormongous]

I can't type enough exclamation points to reflect in full my excitement about this announcement about a spiritual successor to King of Dragon Pass! Appropriately, for anyone who wants to know what one of the best story and history games ever made is like, the GOG version is on sale for $1.49.

 

2016 is given as the release date, but I'm worried that I'll have to wait longer, because the developers are software rather than games people and don't really understand digital distribution. They rightfully blame publishers and the retail system for making the original 1999 release on PC a failure, but repeatedly deny that things are different now. On the other hand, they love designing for iOS, but took years to contract Heroquest to port the game to Android. Basically, cautiously optimistic, but the only way it can go is up!

[Stuart]

Swery65's complex diatribe of global capitalism. 

 

[eot]

I played about 15 minutes of the XCOM shooter. It's got the sloppiest writing I've seen in ages. I hope it's a parody but I doubt it.

[Bjorn]

I played about 15 minutes of the XCOM shooter. It's got the sloppiest writing I've seen in ages. I hope it's a parody but I doubt it.

 

Weirdly enough I played all the way through it, and came away kind of liking it despite how terrible it is.  It's not a good game, and probably not worth playing, but it was a fascinating train wreck. 

[Griddlelol]

I couldn't get past the 2 hour mark. I've got a super low tolerance for bad games, mainly because my backlog is so long (actually it's not very long any more, but when this was released it was huge) and my time so precious. It's not even one of those games where you can say "the writing sucks, but the game play is amazing." Nope, the mechanics are weak too...

If you can get enjoyment from a more academic standpoint, like Bjorn, then great, but I thought it wasn't worth my time.  

[Zeusthecat]

One thing that's really been bothering me since playing Cart Life is how poorly games often handle the passage of time. It seems like the way it is commonly handled is that 1 second of real life time is equivalent to 1 minute of in game time, meaning that a full day/night cycle takes 24 minutes. I hate this system and I think it is garbage despite the fact that a lot of my favorite games (namely Harvest Moon) implement the passage of time in this fashion. It's not so much the length of time that is the real issue for me, but rather, how poorly all of the in game activities scale to this type of system. The problem is that a lot of trivial things that would only take a minute or two in real life end up taking like an hour or two of in game time, creating a situation where you can never get enough done before the day is over because every little thing eats up precious time. This is then exacerbated even further when NPCs or shops have some kind of set schedule and you have to make sure you consciously block out enough time to travel to them, talk/interact with them, and travel back while still leaving enough time to get your other mandatory shit done (like watering crops, feeding livestock, etc.).

 

On the other end of things, I'm not really a big fan of games that use real-life time like Animal Crossing. I like to sit down and play for a few hours at a certain time of day usually and I feel like I am missing out on a lot by never being able to play at odd times.

 

I'm not really sure what a good solution to this problem would be. Maybe dynamically slow down or speed up the passage of time based on the type of activities you are performing or allow the player to just freeze time when they want or automatically freeze time whenever they are standing still. I'm sure there would be pros and cons to all of those approaches. One game though that handled it in a pretty satisfying way for me was the original Harvest Moon for SNES. In that game, time flowed at a pretty brisk pace from 6AM to 6PM and then just stopped as soon as 6PM hit. Additionally, whenever you went inside a building, time stopped. This took away so much of the stress that I experienced in the later games. I could take my time feeding my livestock and perusing shops and was able to spend most of the day just gathering stuff in the forest and talking to townsfolk. Then, when night hit and time stopped, I could go through and water all my crops (even though this meant repeated trips to the hot springs to replenish my stamina), clear out any weeds, and visit the village bar to talk to drunk people. As much as subsequent Harvest Moon games improved on a lot of the mechanics, the way time worked in the first one is something I've always missed.

[Dewar]

Maybe have time as a resource like money and then each task has a set time cost?

[Zeusthecat]

Hey, that's actually not a bad idea. Is that a thing a game has done yet?

[SuperBiasedMan]

I've repeatedly had the exact same frustration and repeatedly been annoyed that exact solution hasn't been implemented in a sim game (that I have seen).

Though it would be quite difficult to handle in realtime, it'd probably require a time speed modifier based on what the activity is. (ie. pulling weeds speeds up time but time goes slower when you're just at the shop and super slow when you're re-ordering inventory).

It's a lot easier to do in a game where you do just block out time in advance and then it happens. Of course a game could combine both, have you block out periods of time in advance, then in real time carry out those periods. But that's problematically frustrating, when the block ends and pulls you out. Like the real time, it's hard to pull off.

[tegan]

I like the Persona 3/4 solution, where each activity you can perform will eat up a clearly designated part of your day. eg: you have an "evening" block that you can spend studying, hanging out, doing a part-time job, dungeon crawling, etc.

[SecretAsianMan]

So apparently there's this play in Germany about Monkey Island

 

This looks amazing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bjorn]

HOLY HELL! That's awesome.

[syntheticgerbil]

Why are they based Guybrush and Elaine on the ugly Special Edition character art? For shame.

 

Although in the play... Guybrush is sort of bald?

[Sno]

Dark Souls 2 has kind of been the only thing i've been playing lately. Bought that DLC and played through it on my main character and thought it was great. Thought it was so good and lended just enough of the right things to the overall experience that i started up a new character to do a full NG playthrough alongside the DLC, and having done that i'm now back to fiddling around with my NG++ main.

I like Dark Souls 2 an awful, awful lot. Yet, if somebody wanted to argue with me that the first game was better, i wouldn't disagree, there's valid arguments there and i agree with a lot of them. Still, i have played more of Dark Souls 2 at this point, and i want to keep playing Dark Souls 2. Dark Souls presents a more interesting place to explore with more nuanced narratives embedded throughout, but Dark Souls 2 has so many small mechanical improvements that i don't think i could step back from. It's something that's been in the back of my mind while playing the game, and i'm sure it's something that happens often with a lot of players and a lot of games.

You know, for example, I still think Morrowind is the best TES game, but i don't think i could go back to it at this point.

Anyways, that's a random thought. Certainly not a new thought, but it's been fairly front and center for me for the last little while. You know, that the game you consider the best, and the game you most want to play, don't always line up.

Perhaps it's that difference between a game eliciting an emotional response through world building and story telling, and eliciting a sort of mechanical appreciation with really tightly designed systems.

[Bjorn]

You pretty much nailed how I feel about DS1 vs DS2 as well.

I think the same idea applies to movies as well. There are terrific movies that I have almost no interest in rewatching, but will rewatch something that's not as good only because it is more entertaining. 2001 vs 2010 comes to mind as an example of that for me.

[Dewar]

The improved multiplayer in DS2 is worth the slightly less interesting tone for me. I don't know if it would even be possible for DS2 to live up to my tonal expectations, after all DS1 was fairly unique at the time (having not owned a PS3 when it came out.)

[Bjorn]

The improved multiplayer in DS2 is worth the slightly less interesting tone for me. I don't know if it would even be possible for DS2 to live up to my tonal expectations, after all DS1 was fairly unique at the time (having not owned a PS3 when it came out.)

 

It's an interesting progression the series has made. Dark Souls took the thematic, story and world elements of Demon's Souls and refined them into something wonderful. DS2 took the mechanics of DS1, and did the same kind of refinement mechanically. Maybe it's just expecting too much to see every facet of a series improve from one to the next.

[TheYoungCato]

Speaking of Demon's Souls, I've been playing it, and I'm not loving it the same way I did Dark Souls. It seems designed to be incredibly irritating to the player. Like not even the Anor Londo archers are as annoying as Demon's is practically all the time.

 

For example, in the Valley of Defilement, there's this huge pack of rats, they're tiny, nearly impossible to hit with most weapons, and if they bite you even once you catch the plague, which slowly kills you and can only be cured by an item that costs 2000 souls to obtain. And when you get past them, you have to fight this boss that's basically a giant mass of leeches, which has one attack where it flails its limbs around the whole arena that has very little windup and is impossible to dodge

 

So after getting fed up with that, I go to the Shrine of Storms, get past the first level, no problems, get through some of the second, there's this shadow creature that can shoot a laser that sweeps the whole room and is impossible to evade, at that point I just laugh and turn off the game.

 

I really don't mind a challenging game, but this isn't like Dark Souls, or God Hand, where the play is so engaging that I'm enjoying myself even when I'm dying alot, it's just tedious.

Like, I feel the urge to keep playing it, but it's the same, self-flagellating urge that made me beat COD4 on veteran despite the utter hell of anti-fun it was.

[Bjorn]

So after getting fed up with that, I go to the Shrine of Storms, get past the first level, no problems, get through some of the second, there's this shadow creature that can shoot a laser that sweeps the whole room and is impossible to evade, at that point I just laugh and turn off the game.

My first time through DeS, this was the WORST area. Though once you understand it, it's arguably one of the easiest. It's almost as much a puzzle as anything.

The shadow things are spawned and controlled by necromancers, who are almost all hidden around the level. In almost every case, you can shoot them from a distance with a bow, killing them and stopping all the shadows they control. It's also possible to just sprint past some of the shadows and hack the necromancers to death. It's just some frustrating trial, error and observation to find them all).

[eot]

What do you guys think Dark Souls II improved on mechanically?

[Bjorn]

A lot of it has to do with multiplayer, to be honest.  I just felt like the game was balanced so much better.  While a few broken items/combos exist, by and large I felt like I had a chance to win a PvP fight no matter what I was wielding.  Backstabbing managed to be better in SP play, and less obnoxious in MP.  Counters exist for almost every single type of attack.  Shields that mostly/fully block every time of damage.  There's backstab/crit protection.  You can't use all these things at once, but that they exist means that people you are fighting are less likely to be homogenous in the strategies they are using, as if the meta shifts to far one direction, then the corresponding defense becomes much more likely to be used. 

[Sno]

What do you guys think Dark Souls II improved on mechanically?

A lot of it mostly affects how PVP interacts with the game, like the improved netcode and a less-borked covenants system that makes more sense in the meta of Dark Souls. (There are still some problems though, particularly in the way the two main covenants are handled.)

 

The existence of numerous new ways to tilt fights in the favor of the poor pve sap being hassled by an invader is also appreciated and is important for the overall meta, because invaders really risk nothing and basically always have the advantage, them generally coming in fresh from a bonfire with a pvp-focused build.

Weapons are also generally much more balanced in DS2, leading to an incredibly diverse array of builds in use. (There were a few major exceptions that have been pretty heavily nerfed.) Magic still seems to be a controversial spot among DS2 players, but i think it's generally handled better in DS2 than it was in DS1.

I think the mechanics of the core stats are much improved, everything can be useful and choices upon leveling up are more difficult.

Back-stabbing is much, much harder to pull off in pvp, it isn't the de facto strategy as it was in DS1. You see people using the full range of mechanics in the game, it makes pvp fights feel almost like you're just playing a good fighting game.

I also love the way DS2 handles successive playthroughs, gradually introducing more complex enemy layouts and more items through those successive playthroughs, instead of just bumping up the difficulty. (Playing through to at least NG+ is strongly encouraged.)

Also, while the boss fights in DS2 don't quite reach the same highs the bosses in the first game hit, there is no boss fight in DS2 that is as bad as the worst boss fights in DS1 were. (Bed of Chaos and Ceaseless Discharge stand out in my mind as fights that just feel unfinished.)

I mean, but then there's still the things the first game definitely does better, like the areas and enemies being more diverse and visually interesting. I also felt that there was enough story conveyed in the first game that you could more or less figure out the plot details on your own without seeking outside guidance. It's very subtle, it weirdly requires you to dive into reading item descriptions and infer things from the environment, but it's basically all in there and you can piece it together yourself. Dark Souls 2, on the other hand, is needlessly opaque about certain crucial elements of its story, and in many cases there just isn't much of one to begin with. There are important chunks of its narrative that simply do not exist anywhere in the game. (Certainly not in the environments, which are - with only a few exceptions - much more nakedly just "levels" to play through, or are otherwise self-contained narratives separate from the rest of the game.) The DLC fleshes out a lot of surrounding details in a really cool way, but offers no answers for the core questions the main story leaves you with. (Recent information seems to suggest that Dark Souls 2 may have been the victim of a very clunky localization though.)