Sulphur on 5/12/2023 at 08:46
I always found that the oddest part of the Eidos Montreal Deus Ex iterations - they made a big hue and cry about Deus Ex's 'four pillars', which seemed to me a reductionist take on what the first game was about. They were good games, mind, but the force-fitted obvious solutions to obvious problems were less than exciting in comparison to DX's open-ended philosophy.
What I mean is, yeah, I think Mosa Lina's a good experiment, almost a deconstructionist take on the old problem of all games reducing to a series of locked doors and corresponding keys, and imma try it soon.
nicked on 5/12/2023 at 10:37
Yeah agreed, though of course it's much easier to do that in a little indie game than when managing a AAA dev team, so I understand the need to reduce the design down to a handful of discrete playstyles.
Aja on 6/12/2023 at 04:34
This week I played an old obscure game called Half Life 1, and for the first time I actually loved it, like almost every second except for Xen. Whenever I play Half Life 2, I'm always kind of waiting to get to the next set piece, but with HL1 at one point I noticed that I was just enjoying the moment I was in, which is a rare feeling. I've even warmed up to the skating-rink physics and silly DSP echoes, which apparently only I notice because a google search for "Half Life annoying echo" still brings up on the first page my thread here from 2004 where I complained about it. I had to savescum a lot to beat it, but that's par for the course for games from this era, so I didn't mind. It maybe would've been a little easier with a proper mouse and keyboard instead of the Steam Deck controls, but using the gyro for fine-tuning the aim worked really well, even for the head crabs.
And speaking of games from that era, I also went back into Thief Gold and got to my usual point, the Mage Towers, and started to get bored. I love saying this is my favourite game of all time, and I think it is, but after having replayed it so many times over the years, it's lost a bit of its mystique. So it was great to see that The Black Parade FM expansion released this week. I've only tried the first level, but it has that distinct dreamlike Thief Gold feeling only with much more advanced architecture and scripting. I'm looking forward to the rest of it.
Jason Moyer on 6/12/2023 at 05:58
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I always found that the oddest part of the Eidos Montreal Deus Ex iterations - they made a big hue and cry about Deus Ex's 'four pillars', which seemed to me a reductionist take on what the first game was about. They were good games, mind, but the force-fitted obvious solutions to obvious problems were less than exciting in comparison to DX's open-ended philosophy.
What I mean is, yeah, I think Mosa Lina's a good experiment, almost a deconstructionist take on the old problem of all games reducing to a series of locked doors and corresponding keys, and imma try it soon.
They felt over-designed. A good Imsim, IMO, should basically be "here are a set of tools, here are a set of problems, here are the systems that define how the world works, we'll push you in a direction but trust you to figure it out" and all 3 EM games felt like they didn't trust players to find their own solutions to things. Even Deathloop, which held your hand more than I think it should have, had tons of unguided content to play with. In DXHR/DXMD/T4 I never felt like I was doing something the devs didn't specifically expect me to do. I enjoyed the games and don't regret playing them, but I can't put them at the top of my games pile. I think I prefer the Bethsoft way of handling lite imsim elements in their more recent games, where you'll do something unexpected and the game doesn't always know how to deal with it. Because at least there's some wiggle room between being designed to be played a certain way and finding your own way of doing things.
nicked on 6/12/2023 at 06:43
I too replayed Half-Life with the 25th anniversary patch. It's probably the nostalgia talking but I think it holds up really well. Then I went down a real nostalgia rabbit hole and played some single player HL mods that I've not played for over 2 decades - the ETC levels by Dave Johnson (i.e. the de_dust guy) and They Hunger (ridiculous B-movie zombie shenanigans). Then I discovered there's a modern, pretty faithful, very high quality mod in the style of Opposing Force, called Field Intensity, which is basically just more Half-Life (some dodgy voice acting aside as is far for the course with fan-made content). Highly recommended to anyone else on a Half-Life nostalgia trip.
henke on 6/12/2023 at 13:10
Like all the cool kids I am also playing The Black Parade. Just hit the halfway point. Shit is getting crazy. The production values are great and I am immersed as heck.
Master O on 7/12/2023 at 00:17
The GOG release of Deus Ex GOTY.
Great game. I can see why it's considered an all-time classic.
henke on 9/12/2023 at 20:30
Finished The Black Parade. 22h total. It really feels like a lost Thief game. Story is very well told, production values are top notch. So many surpring and delightful little things along the way. One of the best things I've played this year.
Anarchic Fox on 16/12/2023 at 01:54
Roadwarden is what I wanted
Disco Elysium to be. I'm three-quarters through, I'll write a full review once I finish.
Edit: I am now exactly 85% finished. Three days ago, a group of bandits beat me to within an inch of my life and drove me out of their camp tied unconscious to my saddle. Yesterday, a mayor's thugs beat me severely in the common room of a luxurious inn and tossed me out of the town gate. I feel a strong sense of satisfaction with the events of both days.
Quote Posted by henke
Finished The Black Parade. 22h total. It really feels like a lost Thief game. Story is very well told, production values are top notch. So many surpring and delightful little things along the way. One of the best things I've played this year.
This might get me back into playing Thief! It's been a decade since I last checked whether the old burnout still stung.
demagogue on 16/12/2023 at 14:22
Roadwarden is the storyteller's game if ever there was one.
It was one of our game club games a few months ago.
It does take time to get through though. I still need to finish it off.
