Yakoob on 2/1/2020 at 21:17
I started playing Final Fantasy 15 and digging it. Feels like a very un-Final Fantasy game but in a good way. The intro with pushing the car sets the mood perfectly and carries it throughout it. The game does an amazing job of conveying that "a road trip with the boys" experience and there's so many nice little touches, from the FF music on the radio, to the camera angles and vistas when driving, to Prompto taking photos, to Ignis having that "responsible adult" scolding tone. Nice.
I just got to the part where your homeland gets invaded and your papa gets kill and that was a good plot twist that changes the tone, altho I think it lacked depth due to me not having any real idea who my dad was aside from the brief 1-minute scene in intro. I hear there's a prequel anime I should've watched or something?
reizak on 2/1/2020 at 21:44
Quote Posted by Tomi
What would be a better time to start a new thread like this?! We could make it a yearly thing perhaps, that would make things neat and organised, and much nicer to navigate.
I think we should go exactly the opposite way and append all the latter megathreads to the original one and have a single ludicrous thread. Having a bunch of 500 page threads has no benefit over having a single several thousand page thread since no one's going to read through it page by page in either case, and having a single several thousand page thread has the benefit of being a bit funny. I'm always a little sad when someone makes a new one.
Thirith on 3/1/2020 at 09:54
To balance this out somewhat: I would be sad if there were only megathreads, but I think it's naive to think that without them, the TTLG forums would thrive. If we all started individual threads on the games we're currently playing, I'm pretty sure that what would happen is this: you'd get a handful of threads with half a dozen posts at best, but the majority of people won't post, because it's depressing to start a thread and get one or two or, much of the time, zero responses. The up-front effort isn't worth the expected result to many people. Obviously it's something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I think it's one that's borne out by experience. At this point in time TTLG isn't big enough, it isn't dynamic enough, to generate activity that actually feels active over many threads, more so when you've got individual threads dedicated to sometimes pretty niche games. It's great when it happens and when someone posts such a thread, and I do think these are necessary as well, but to keep people engaged you need to have activity, and you're more likely at this time to have that in threads that are more about chat than about in-depth discussion. I am pretty certain (and yes, again, I know this veers into the territory of self-fulfilling prophecy) that without more general threads like the megathreads as an underlying engine, the TTLG forums would feel like correspondence chess, and I suspect that if that were to happen, even more people would leave. I know I would, because I can have more, better engagement with the TTLGers I'm closest to elsewhere.
tl;dr - Based on my experience here and on a number of other forums, I think that a community of this size needs both very general chat threads and more specific discussions. It's the combination that keeps people engaged. Take away either and you're likely to lose people, unless your community is big enough and active enough so that a bunch of very specific threads actually get enough posts to look and feel alive.
Thirith on 3/1/2020 at 17:38
Which I absolutely think makes sense. It's also how I tend to do it.
henke on 3/1/2020 at 17:50
Yeah that's how to do it. I thought about making a thread for Jedi: Fallen Order soon after I started playing it but I'm glad I held off because this game is turning out to be uhhhhhh KINDA CRAP.
When you're just fighting one enemy it's kinda Souls-ish but not as satisfying because every hit feels oddly impact-less like you're hitting dudes with a foam bat or something, and when you're fighting groups of enemies it's just straight up FUCKING ANNOYING. I started off on Jedi Master difficulty cuz I wanted that Jedi Dark Souls feel but when it got too annoying to wanna continue playing I turned it down to Jedi Master (medium) and honestly it's more enjoyable/less annoying this way. More like a Jedi Arkham Asylum feel. It's ok.
Also playing GRIS at the mo, I'll do a write-up when I'm done with it.
Sulphur on 3/1/2020 at 18:05
What, you want this Dark Souls Jedi game to feel like Dark Souls but you're hitting dudes? Here's something I wrote elsewhere.
Quote Posted by "Sulphur, somewhere else"
...but really, this game will stick a katana up your arse without buying you dinner first.
And then - then you just keep at it, until you realise that, oh my dear god, there's a strategy to these battles after all. Usually, you get just a glimpse of something that works before you get eviscerated, but that's enough: you try again, and you figure it out. Some bosses need to be constantly attacked; some, to be deflected, then countered; some you chase, and some you use a prosthetic tool for; and for others, you try a different skill or google various flavours of cheese. But for all of them, you study their stances, their frames, and you react. And when you've got it down, the dance of blades clashing and sparks flying in that relentless sword ballet that you - you - are responsible for on your screen is one of the purest joys in gaming until with a final stab, blood ejaculates across the threshold from an enemy's severed artery in an obscene fountain of catharsis.
You know what that is, henke? It's goddamn
Sekiro.
Having said that: Jedi Fallen Order is fine. Sure, the light saber combat is (literally) bloodless, but it's solid. You block, parry, dodge. Like Sekiro, but with more second-degree burns (those are some good eruptions of sparks in them duels). It's a fun Metroid Souls thing with gorgeous graphics and a lightsaber that was FINALLY DESIGNED AS A LIGHT SOURCE. Like, you hold it up, and it
casts shadows. How about that. It's also easier than Sekiro, so it's my B-game to catch my breath before Sekiro pummels it out of my lungs.
henke on 3/1/2020 at 19:01
I just wanted the Dark Souls feels without it being a whole, exhausting Dark Souls thang.
Look, I don't hate Jedi Fallen Order or anything. Although I do hate a lot about it.
Renzatic on 4/1/2020 at 04:49
Or Salt and Sanctuary.
Thirith on 4/1/2020 at 10:34
For me, the 2D game that most successfully evoked Dark Souls yet was also its own thing is still Hollow Knight. I think it may just be my favourite Metroidvania/platformer of all time. I am very much looking forward to the sequel, although at the same time I think it's an almost impossible task. I find that I both do and do not want just more of the same.
Tomi on 4/1/2020 at 23:25
Hey, I actually started playing Blasphemous yesterday! What a weird game. I like it so far though, especially now that I've started to figure out a bit how things work in this game. I'm still only a couple of hours in, but there's so much going on and so much to see.
But damn, that whole setting is a bit messed up, isn't it? It brings back a memory from my childhood when we went to visit my very religious aunt. Of course I wanted to have a look around the house, and there was this one room upstairs full of Christian symbols: religious paintings, "bloody" crucifixes, angel figures, candles burning, that sort of stuff... I remember feeling so disgusted by it all, and in a way Blasphemous makes me feel like that as well. That sort of overly religious stuff has always freaked me out a bit, but in a game I suppose it can be uncomfortably entertaining. :D
Hollow Knight is of course an excellent game and reminded me of Dark Souls as well, but while HK might be the better game, I think that Blasphemous takes the 2D Dark Souls aspect even further. HK is occasionally too cute and fun, whereas Blasphemous is the right kind of gloomy and disturbing and weird.