Video Game Discussion Thread Part 10: Video Games Fucking Suck

[DaveC]

disco elysium is awesome. it's a point and click RPG in which you are a cop who wakes up so hung over that he can't remember anything at all, trying to solve a murder mystery in a dystopian world where the reason for society's collapse seems to have something to do with disco spreading a literal plague. it's like a weird cross between baldur's gate, bioshock, monkey island, and fallout and i friggin love it already. the ability to customize your character is way deeper than any game i've ever played before and i can tell it's the kind of game you can play through a dozen times and get a completely different experience with each run.

very highly recommended

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

I picked up Stadia basically because I've been out of gaming since my oldest was born 5 years ago and needed something easy to hide from him. Plus I had a $100 Google credit so it cost like 20 bucks in total to pick up.

I know the reviews haven't been great - but I'm incredibly impressed by how it played considering it's nothing more than a Chromecast and a controller. No lag whatsoever when playing 2K

 

[the tourist]

I’m enjoying Jedi: Fallen Order so far.

 

[DaveC]

in your opinion is it anything like the old jedi knight games? i've heard some people say yes and others say not really so i'm undecided on whether to buy it.

2020 looks to potentially be a great year for simulation games, new microsoft flight simulator, KSP2, and crusader kings 3 are all scheduled to be released in the second half. though i'm expecting at least one of those titles (and possibly all three) to be pushed back to spring 2021 because all of those developers are notorious for delays.

 

[the tourist]

Actually, for being a Star Wars fan, this is the first game I’ve put much time into. I’ve read in some of the reviews that people say it’s kinda like Dark Souls with a Star Wars skin - though I’ve never played Dark Souls. I don’t know that it’s worth full current price, but I got it in a bundle on a good sale recently.

 

[DaveC]

 

[the tourist]

Now I’m playing my first Assassin’s Creed game, when I can, after the kids are in bed. Origins. The controls aren’t what I’m used to, but it sure is beautiful to look at so far.

 

[cobl04]

My partner's brother gave me his Xbox One to borrow. My housemate has a PS4 but I refuse to use it cos I hate the controllers. I'm playing DBZ Kakarot.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Just got the outer worlds. Time to see what it’s all aboot

 

[DaveC]

Just got the outer worlds. Time to see what it’s all aboot

what's your opinion?

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Great. Deserving of the approximate 8/10 that most places rated it as though. Being the first of its namesake, it has a lot of things that can be improved. Unpolished. Not all of it was well thought out. Great fun though.

Also, it connects Borderlands back to Fallout, with a splash of Mass Effect in there.

 

[DaveC]

pretty much my thoughts as well. it was more of a shooter game than i was expecting, i was thinking there'd be more stealth options to complete objectives, similar to fallout, but most of the quests require you to go through enemies rather than around them to reach the objective. and the inventory management kinda sucks on PC. but otherwise i had good fun. i tried to give it a replay over the holidays though as a bootlicking melee character with different companions (i used parvati and friar max pretty much exclusively in my first run) and it was kinda frustrating since the melee mechanics are pretty much copied exactly from skyrim, except in outer worlds 95% of your enemies have guns, so you basically are railroaded into creating a tank that can take several shots while closing the distance. i agree that 8ish/10 is the correct rating.

i bought Journey to the Savage Planet last night which looks kinda like a cross between outer worlds and no man's sky. haven't played it yet but i probably will this weekend and will post my thoughts about it here.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

If they intend upon making a series out of it, it’ll definitely improve. So there’s great potential, I think.

Oh the menus suck on Xbox too. If you highlight an item, it pops up a summary and that covers every item to the right, so you can’t actually ever look at your inventory in full. Surprised that got through quality assurance testing.

Also, I’m playing the game on the hardest difficulty - it’s not actually hard, just stupid. It’s REALLY hard at the beginning. I had to do the tutorial like ten times just to make it out, including a bunch of tedious things like a whole conversation and sneaking past monsters etc., all because you can’t save and there are no checkpoints. Also, the Pavorati chick dies almost instantly at first, and you can’t revive them. So I often find myself ordering my companions to hide before engaging in a fight, because they’re too dumb to save themselves.

 

[DaveC]

It’s REALLY hard at the beginning

title of your sex tape

 

[DaveC]

i bought Journey to the Savage Planet last night which looks kinda like a cross between outer worlds and no man's sky.

it's this with a solid dash of outer wilds-style platforming and puzzle-solving thrown in too. i've played for a couple hours and it doesn't really break any new ground but it does mash up some of the better mechanics and aesthetics from games i've played and enjoyed recently so it's definitely worth 30 bucks.

 

[DaveC]

here's one explanation for cobbler:

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/feb/28/why-do-video-game-players-invert-the-controls

“From a cognitive perspective, players who don’t invert are ‘acting as’ the avatar, with movement/steering originating from between the avatar’s eyes, controlling the camera,” says Dr Jennifer Corbett, a lecturer in psychology at Brunel University London’s Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience. “Players who invert are ‘acting on’ the avatar, with the controls either behind or on top of the head controlling the avatar.”

So one way of interpreting this could be that the non-inverters are fully inhabiting the avatar as a body, while the inverters are controlling it as a vehicle. This would suggest that non-inverters are more immersed in the experience, but Corbett disputes this. “The only published study on this I came across – Frischmann, et al, 2015 – found just the opposite, with Y axis inverters reporting higher levels of both presence and immersion.” This might be why it’s the axis inverters who are the most passionate and defensive when this issue comes up on Twitter. Also, many inverters feel that inverting the Y-axis actually brings us closer to human movement because we tilt our heads backwards to look up and forwards to look down.

 

[UnforgettableLemon]

This pandemic is dumb. Just wanted to share that I wrote a thing: http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/we-must-be-better/

Also working on a Final Fantasy VII collection. Stay cool, cats and kittens.

 

[DaveC]

GTAV for PC is free today on the epic games store.

 

[bono_212]

And it's NINETY GBs. WTF.

I didn't notice and had the whole thing install onto my SSD which is 500GBs total. Gotta uninstall it and put it on an external HDD.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

And it's NINETY GBs. WTF.

I didn't notice and had the whole thing install onto my SSD which is 500GBs total. Gotta uninstall it and put it on an external HDD.

I would recommend not running a game off an external hard drive. Not only is the external nature limiting, but your SSD is optimized for this. Much faster.

 

[DaveC]

yeah it's massive. i remember when i first downloaded a torrent of the PC version (i paid for the playstation version so i don't feel bad about it) and it was 50-something GB. it's weird that it's almost double the size now but maybe they added a bunch of content to the multiplayer side of the game which i never paid attention to.

it still has nothing on the sims 4, which, if you download that with all the DLC, adds up to something around 250GB.

my setup is a 128GB SSD for windows, office, and system utilities, and nearly everything else gets installed to and run off my 1TB HDD. it works really well and was really reasonably priced for what i paid for the PC.

 

[bono_212]

I would recommend not running a game off an external hard drive. Not only is the external nature limiting, but your SSD is optimized for this. Much faster.

Yes, but my SSD will then only have 20GBs free on it

This one game is gonna go on an extrenal, so that other games may live.

 

[cobl04]

I haven't been able to get anything done this morning because of this.



Paper Mario 64 & Paper Mario Thousand Year Door are two of my favourite video games of all time.

But the past three games in the series, Super Paper Mario, Sticker Star and Colour Splash fucked with the formula and ruined it. So we haven't had a good game in 16 years.

I wish I was more excited after watching the trailer. But I've been hurt too many times before. I am ever so slightly cautiously optimistic.

 

[bono_212]

I've never played any of the paper Mario games, but I'm a sucker for Origami so let's go.

 

[cobl04]

I suspect you'll really like this game then, if you're uncoloured by the brilliance of the first two and the awfulness of the next three.

 

[bono_212]

I like the RPG series, is it anything like that?

 

[LemonMelon]

Paper Mario is one of my favorite games of all time and Thousand Year Door was a worthy followup. If this is even close, I'll be ecstatic.

 

[gump]

I don't know how that could be possible - and I'm generally avoiding reviews - but it looks like Last of Us Part II could even be better than the original. Holy shit.

 

[gump]

Last of Us 2: It is good.

 

[cobl04]

I got a big present for my 30th birthday... an Xbox. Well. I was hoping for a One X, but they're really hard to find at the moment, so I have the money for it. But now I face a dilemma... do I get a One X now? Or do I wait for the Series X?

I watched the games showcase, the Halo game looks cool, and I think I quite liked the look of Fable (which doesn't look like will be forward compatible with the One X).