henke on 4/8/2023 at 12:57
Finished Dredge. Got the "good" ending. That was short n sweet! Despite the horror-theme it really isn't scary at all, nor challenging. But I didn't mind. Compared to the other big genre-blending indiehit of the year, Dave The Diver, it also has a more sedate pace, which I appreciated.
Malf on 7/8/2023 at 10:53
Before last week, I was playing Jagged Alliance 3 and Watch Dogs Legion.
Both have gone on indefinite hold.
Now there is only Baldur's Gate 3.
Which is a shame, as both of those are good games.
Jagged Alliance 3 is a fantastic turn-based combat game that's maybe a little too long for its own good. Some people find the merc barks annoying, but I've found the majority quite endearing, if a little repetitive.
The actual meat of the game, the turn-based combat, is pretty solid, with lots of options, although machine guns and sniper rifles can end up trivialising a lot of it.
There is also a nasty difficulty spike triggerred by a certain event or after a set time that dramatically ups the difficulty and overrides a lot of the progress you've made, which can make it a struggle to continue past that point.
Watch Dogs Legion is my first dalliance in UbiSoft games for a long time, and I picked it and a bunch of others up cheap in the recent stealth game Steam sale.
Ignoring the usual Ubi Icon collectafest, it's pretty good, but seriously weirds me out with the distorted proportions of central London. Streets are often MUCH wider than they are in real London, and areas I would view as being essential landmarks are conspicuous by their absence.
For example, Soho's red-light district has been compressed down to pretty much just Walker's court, yet the street immediately above it, Berwick Street, which is the street on the cover of the Oasis album "(What's The Story) Morning Glory ?" is completely excised, with the north end of Walker's Court leading directly on to what I assume is Oxford Street... which isn't named, which is just fucking odd. It could be argued that Oxford Street is pretty central to Central London, so for it to not be named is massively disconcerting.
And I know it would have been a licensing nightmare to include actual business names in an open world game, especially one about a near-future fascist London, but the entire identity of whole areas has disappeared because of the absence of these businesses, mostly replaced by generic shop fronts. For example, every side of Golden Square in real life has media companies lining them, but in the game, it's all generic newsagents and restaurants. It's also not named.
I wouldn't mind the excision of some areas, if it weren't for the stupidly wide streets in other areas. For example, the street outside of Charing Cross (The Strand) is about 4 times wider than it is in real life.
It's probably the most intense uncanny valley experience I've ever had. I'm massively familiar with a lot of the areas depicted, so even the smallest difference sticks out like a sore thumb.
But once I'm able to turn off my inner pedant, it's a fairly enjoyable romp, with some wonderfully normal people being thrust in to unlikely hero roles, such as my first character being a middle-aged Northern Irish red-headed lady with thick black specs and a job in publishing.
But overall, I do get the feeling that the number of actual Londoners working on the project was substantially less than it needed to be. Real Londoners who work in the areas portrayed would have had much stronger opinions about what should be represented, and the character of different areas.
WingedKagouti on 7/8/2023 at 11:57
Quote Posted by Malf
I wouldn't mind the excision of some areas, if it weren't for the stupidly wide streets in other areas. For example, the street outside of Charing Cross (The Strand) is about 4 times wider than it is in real life.
Without having played the game or visited London, I expect the extra wide street was for gameplay reasons, ie. driving down the street the size it should be would make gameplay obnoxious. In real life navigation through narrow streets is usually done at low speeds, while in open world games driving is usually at speeds that would get your license revoked instantly. It is easy to imagine a design meeting going something like:
1: "The testers are constantly crashing here, we should do something"
2: "Let's widen the street"
3: "Won't that be inaccurate?"
1: "It will, but it's a sacrifice that makes gameplay better"
Malf on 7/8/2023 at 12:31
Yeah, I kinda figured that.
But it still breaks my brain.
It's the same reason that I always laugh at even the concept of a high speed car chase through central London in Hollywood movies.
Thirith on 8/8/2023 at 06:38
Last night when going to bed I was thinking about Divinity Original Sin 2, which I started playing recently, and I realised that while I'm not disliking my time with the game, I've barely engaged with it so far. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly it is, and I suspect in part it's still that I'm expecting the game to be something else than it is. I used to consider RPGs my favourite genre, but the thing is that it's always been about stories, characters and worlds much more so than systems and combat. I'd read about the DOS2 characters having personality, but as a result I expected there to be lots of party banter and interaction... and there isn't really, or at least I've not encountered much of it. In an odd way, I'm not even feeling like I've got a party that's sharing an adventure with me, it's more like I can switch between four PCs that happen to be in the same place.
And that's one thing that doesn't particularly work for me: up front, I rarely have an idea of what character I should enter a conversation with. I'm not even talking about skill checks (though I'm also talking about skill checks), it's more about not having an idea of what personality would suit a conversation before entering a conversation. It ties in with one of the hundreds of RPS articles on Baldur's Gate 3: I would like to be able to switch between characters once I'm in a conversation. I realise that the guy I'm talking to doesn't like women? Okay, let one of the guys take over! The character in front of me is a bit of a racist? Okay, I'll switch to a character of the same race. It seems like intimidation would be a fitting way to continue a conversation? The burly fighter with an abrasive personality takes the lead. But the way the game is designed, I don't know any of these things until I start the conversation. You could integrate all of this into the conversation system, but the way the game is designed doesn't facilitate it.
But again: at least in part it's that I'm expecting the wrong thing. And I think that games like Planescape Torment and especially Disco Elysium may have ruined me somewhat for RPGs that have different priorities.
Sulphur on 8/8/2023 at 06:59
Quote Posted by Thirith
In an odd way, I'm not even feeling like I've got a party that's sharing an adventure with me, it's more like I can switch between four PCs that happen to be in the same place.
That's a good observation. I think that's almost exactly how it was designed - if you were playing co-op, each player would probably be playing as one of those characters with their own story, and the places where their stories intersect is where you make choices that snowball for others. There was talk of how you could screw each other over and betray members of your co-op party, which I suppose can only happen if everyone feels like they're playing the main character. It probably won't make for a narrative that comes together cleanly in the long-run, I guess.
Malf on 8/8/2023 at 15:14
Deadfire and Wasteland 3 are good at letting you choose which character to check against, but yeah, the amount of times I've quickloaded in BG3 because some character other than my bard has stumbled in to trigerring a conversation is rather annoying.
henke on 9/8/2023 at 07:22
Kinda hooked on this hot new indie metroidvania platformer Pseudoregalia.
[video=youtube;GOH7EiK2wBI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOH7EiK2wBI[/video]
Yes, very N64. The lo-fi aestehtic of the environment does help in making navigation a lot more readable tho. The whole structure of the game is also very old school in that it just makes you roam these big interconnected levels without a map, and frankly a lot of time is just spent rethreading familiar ground looking for where the hell you're supposed to go next. If the movement wasn't so much fun this would be a real problem. Can't remember the last time I played a 3D platformer with such satisfying movement. Never, perhaps? This thing is 5 bucks on Steam and shaping up to be one of the year's best games.
edit: DONE! Beat the game in 6.6h. Yeah that was good!
Thirith on 14/8/2023 at 06:45
I finished my replay of Oxenfree yesterday (I'm planning to play Oxenfree 2 next). I do hope they've tweaked the dialogue system somewhat; while it generally works well in the first game, it's usually not clear whether your character will wait until one of the other characters has finished their line or whether they'll just interrupt in mid-sentence. Overall, the overlapping conversations work reasonably well and sound more natural than the usual stilted back-and-forth in dialogue-driven games, but it's rather inconsistent in how the game handles the conversations.
Also: *waves at henke, Sulphur and Boberro, since all of them turned up in my game to haunt me*
Also, it seems like I'm almost through with chapter 2 of Divinity Original Sin 2. It still hasn't fully clicked for me, but on the other hand I'm still enjoying it more than the first game, which I found really grating.
Sulphur on 14/8/2023 at 15:29
OoooooOOooo now tell us about oxenfree twOooooooOOo /ghost
I liked Oxenfree for its halloween-inflected hijinx and its darkly textured, almost desaturated painting aesthetic. It was almost great, but there was something missing from its spooky through-line I can't put my finger on, like most of the parts were there, but it didn't all come together the way it should have to knock me out of my seat. As it wasn't a subtle story to begin with, I think it's like they could have gone further with the surprises and reasons for what was happening and the twisted nature of what everyone was going through, but the overall feeling was of a punch or three being pulled.
