Renault on 12/4/2024 at 05:18
The latest Amnesia game, The Bunker, is really good. It's genuinely scary, and it's got some immersive sim elements to it as well. It's all kind of all based around a hub area that you'll return to throughout the game, and the story itself much more straightforward and conventional than the rest of the Amnesia games (for the most part). I don't want to say anymore to ruin the experience, but I'd definitely recommend it (and it's also on Gamepass if you want to give it a try for free).
henke on 12/4/2024 at 10:32
I like those Amnesia games.
Anyway, office mates roped me into playing Diablo 4 this week. We did some QUESTS??? and RAIDS??? I think. It didn't wow me over. Now they're trying to get me into World of Warcraft. They say it is sure to WOW me over. I don't get it.
Malf on 12/4/2024 at 10:52
I can't think of anything more anti-henke than the average MMO / Live Service game.
Don't get me wrong, some of them have interesting co-op stuff going on. But all too often their "high level" play comes down to little more than party-based rhythm games; you will fill your role and perform this exact action at this exact moment, and if you don't, the whole team dies.
It's pretty much the antithesis of emergent gameplay.
On top of which, there are very few, if any of these games that haven't been infected by microtransactions and FOMO.
Guild Wars 2 is probably one of the most generous examples out there (certainly the one I have the most experience with), with a whole world available to explore for free that has massive amounts of excellent open world content before you even start thinking about buying expansions.
But even there, there's constant dark pattern exposure encouraging players to spend money on microtransactions.
These days, I would feel dirty trying to convince friends to play one of these games.
Sulphur on 12/4/2024 at 11:00
Quote Posted by henke
Anyway, office mates roped me into playing Diablo 4 this week. We did some QUESTS??? and RAIDS??? I think. It didn't wow me over. Now they're trying to get me into World of Warcraft. They say it is sure to WOW me over. I don't get it.
Sounds like your office friends are pretty into MMOs! That's a preference thing at the end of the day, really.
Jesh and I did the Diablo 4 beta prior to release and came to the same conclusion. It's all right, but nothing particularly engaging. We did play D3 with Malf as well, and honestly the actual draw is just faffing around with friends. The game itself was so-so, except for when we got to a point where the screen was basically hydras, death lasers, explosions, meteors, and teleportation zapping going on across almost the entire screen. The enemies were basically lost in particle effects because we were firing off so many skills at once. It was completely ridiculous, but also took a long time to get there. So on balance, it was... all right? Overall, my experience with D3 and D4 wasn't particularly memorable. I'd rather just play D1 solo again.
Malf on 12/4/2024 at 12:42
Level disparity is one of the major drawbacks in these kinds of games for me. It's all very well telling your friends to play with you, but the conversation inevitably reaches an uncomfortable point where you say something like "Oh, but the fun starts at level 80!" or "Yeah, the first hundred+ hours aren't really representative of how the game plays at high level."
I honestly think it's entirely reasonable for people to give up at that point and play something that doesn't require a massive time investment to get to the good bits. In fact, I'd say that's probably the healthy option, eschewing all of the passive aggressive bullshit between friends stuff like this fosters.
Helldivers 2 seems to have neatly sidestepped a lot of this, but I haven't played enough to be certain that some of the stuff locked behind War Bonds isn't overpowered and essential.
WingedKagouti on 12/4/2024 at 14:38
Doing my annual replay of Morrowind. This time around I decided to do the main content in reverse order: Bloodmoon first, Tribunal second and Sixth House last.
Morrowind is still Morrowind nearly 22 years later.
henke on 12/4/2024 at 17:29
Quote Posted by Malf
I can't think of anything more anti-henke than the average MMO / Live Service game.
Haha yeah. We've played various multiplayer games lately, I already cajoled these guys into a few sessions of One Armed Robber. In turn, I'm being a good sport going along with all this MMO stuff for a bit. D4 is in the Game Pass and WoW is free till lvl20 so this isn't costing me anything. D4 looks great and the gameplay is very smooth but also so dang easy as to get boring quickly. You soon figure out a nice lil routine of throwing down some AOE thingy, then shooting arrows and dodging a bit. Then you repeat that procedure a billion times? It's so easy that barely any teamwork was required. We played the first 30 min or so of WoW today and I immediately preferred its slower pace, and it feels like more teamwork might be required? Still, I very much doubt I'll get into it, but I must say it is fun to finally see what the hubbub is about, even if I'm 20 years late to the party.
PigLick on 13/4/2024 at 04:51
WK, do you use any mods or open morrowind?
WingedKagouti on 13/4/2024 at 11:47
Quote Posted by PigLick
WK, do you use any mods or open morrowind?
Using OpenMW and official mods only, I have yet to have the desire to mod my experience much more in any of my annual replays. OpenMW was the biggest thing I did, it also makes the experience a lot more stable (especially when alt-tabbing).
SD on 13/4/2024 at 14:29
I tried to replay Morrowind a few years ago, the world is every bit as compelling as any of the other Elder Scrolls games, but after Oblivion and Skyrim it just feels a bit rough around the edges. In my view it is crying out for a remaster.
