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Author Topic: Useless gaming news & chatter  (Read 1341160 times)
Yegolev
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Reply #1470 on: February 19, 2014, 06:17:37 AM

People I respect have told me Levine is a jerk.  Haven't met him myself, but I did play some Bioshock.

I'd say $5 is good for Amalaur.  It's not terrible, it just didn't grab me.

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
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Phildo
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Reply #1471 on: February 19, 2014, 06:35:03 AM

It's kind of funny that a game that's on just about everyone's Game of the Year list managed to not make money.
schild
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Reply #1472 on: February 19, 2014, 07:16:13 AM

It's kind of funny that a game that's on just about everyone's Game of the Year list managed to not make money.
G R A P H I C S
Paelos
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Reply #1473 on: February 19, 2014, 07:20:17 AM

It's kind of funny that a game that's on just about everyone's Game of the Year list managed to not make money.

Blowing a budget and make anything unprofitable.

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Yegolev
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Reply #1474 on: February 19, 2014, 08:38:22 AM

Why the new Thief is going to suck:

Quote
“So, this demo. Go in the manor. Crystal clear, no frustration. You know what to do. You know where to go. How you do it – this is where we want your freedom. A lot of opportunities. A lot of ways to play. Aggressive. Non-lethally. It’s up to you… it’s your playground. You had a bad day, last night, you feel aggressive, perfect. Use your arrows and have fun. So this is where we really want to give you all the tools. We’re going to build these maps, this universe, to let you figure out – all the ingredients will be there – what type of fun I want to have today.”
Yet this spoke to our major concern with the demo – one far greater than the insipid, dated nature of the burning bridge sequence. The “ingredients” that featured within the level did not feel general-purpose and consistent. They were not systems; they were hand-placed, hard-coded points of interest. Case in point (no pun intended): rope arrows. Previously, Garrett’s rope arrow stuck to any wooden surface, after which a climbable rope would unfurl from its point of impact. Here, rope arrows only attach to specifically marked anchor points that have been placed by level designers – anchor points that seemed to exist when the only way forward was through the use of a rope arrow.
“It’s a question of production choice,” [Producer Stephane] Roy explains. “If I give you the possibility to shoot the rope arrow everywhere, I will have to cut something. I will have to reduce our intention for the narrative. If it’s everywhere, the cost of it is to block your view, because it’s still a console. It’s still tech. By having a smart level design, by making sure that feels natural that here you can go – not scripted, but you check and if you feel that you should be able to do that and it’s there, the job is done. If it’s not frustrating, the job is done.”

From:
http://sneakybastards.net/theobserver/thief-hands-on/

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Job601
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Reply #1475 on: February 19, 2014, 08:55:00 AM

Amalur is a good game with a lot of good content, but the systems are so unbalanced that the game will break for most players who know how to min-max even a little by the time you've seen about a third of it.  Then you're just gliding through the content without the interesting combat, and the game becomes a not as good Skyrim. There are no show-stopper bugs, but it desperately needed a re-balancing patch that it never got.
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Reply #1476 on: February 19, 2014, 09:42:09 AM

Why the new Thief is going to suck:
I think there is an image for that, it certainly won't make old hardcore fans happy.  Hey I found it:



Personally I don't care if it isn't like the old thief games I played.  I want something more like Dishonored, and that's basically what it is.
Sky
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Reply #1477 on: February 19, 2014, 09:46:46 AM

Why the new Thief is going to suck:
That's bizarre, as rope arrows were, as he pointed out, limited to wooden surfaces. Which was pretty limited without feeling that way. I don't see how such a completely retarded thing as anchor point (how does that go during a home inspection? "No, sorry, I'm going to have to put in a stipulation that you remove these rope arrow anchor points.") works.

Why can't people just play Thief 2 and make more of that with prettier graphics?

Reading through the article now. It's amazing how they really don't understand the draw of the game, insult gamers and insert their ego so completely.

Oh my god the console limitations are why rope arrows were nerfed?

The whole Focus thing, seeing footsteps through the wall? Wasn't the genius of Thief being able to use your ears to hear the guards walking, then quickly peeking around the corner when he stops? And that Focus can be disabled...but the entire game is designed around it and it's linked to the story. Hmm? Then he said 'gamify'.  "Focus is a way to essentially gamify Garrett’s nature as a master thief; a shortcut to making players ‘feel’ like a master, rather than by having them master the systems and environment on their own" Um, yeah, fuck you at this point.

A flashing light instead of the classic light gem? If it ain't broke...

This sounds horrible.

Sky
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Reply #1478 on: February 19, 2014, 09:49:29 AM

Ug, reading that graphic, thanks a lot  Ohhhhh, I see.

Setting aside any issues with the job side of Levine's announcement...I have to hope that the core of his change in focus is because Bioshock got so far down that linear, scripted path that seems to be the thing. When you start tossing gameplay because it interferes with your storytelling, you need to get out of the game business.
Phildo
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Reply #1479 on: February 19, 2014, 10:14:23 AM

So they basically want to make Assassin's Creed in a Victorian setting?
Paelos
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Reply #1480 on: February 19, 2014, 10:16:12 AM

So they basically want to make Assassin's Creed in a Victorian setting?

Yes. For consoles, and all their restrictions.

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Margalis
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Reply #1481 on: February 19, 2014, 10:24:11 AM


Scripted set-piece bullshit is the worst. A lot of games these days feel like they are barely systems at all, and are instead just bits of filler between one-off scenarios.

Playtesting has a lot to do with this. If you make rope arrows able to attach to any (wooden) surface when you run a playtest some guy is going to fire his arrow to a weird spot and the people watching the playtest are going to freak out.

I hate playtesting. I used to be against focus testing but for playtesting, but now I think even most playtesting is bad. If you watch someone play a game it has a huge amplifying effect on anything that goes "wrong", making even trivial problems appear massive. If you are watching a guy try to solve a puzzle and he gets stuck for 30 seconds it feels like an eternity, then the team rushes out and makes the puzzle simpler because a single person was stuck for less than a minute.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2014, 10:27:34 AM by Margalis »

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HaemishM
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Reply #1482 on: February 19, 2014, 10:25:08 AM

Welp, that graphic told me everything I needed to know about the new Thief all right. Fuck this game. I might buy it on $5 Steam sale, but if I want to play Ass Creed or Dishonored, well... I have those games, I'll just go play them instead of you skullfucking one of the most beloved stealth game franchises of all time in the name of making it "more like other games that have succeeded and which never would have existed without the original Thief which I apparently TOTALLY did not fucking play."

Wanker.

Paelos
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Reply #1483 on: February 19, 2014, 10:38:55 AM

As gaming consumers we just need to stop hoping for older games to come back. Instead we should just pay for things that innovate at all, and pay for them over and over again while shunning the derivative shit until it's in the bargain bin.

Far too often we rationalize about buying shit we KNOW is going to be shit because we can get some modicum of entertainment value from it. All that does is give people the money to make even more derivative shit.


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Ingmar
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Reply #1484 on: February 19, 2014, 11:12:01 AM

I have no attachment to the old games, so I'm not sure I care about any of that stuff in a specific sense, but what strikes me out of all of that is that you better be awfully certain that your story is good enough if you're letting it dictate the mechanics of the game that directly.

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Paelos
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Reply #1485 on: February 19, 2014, 11:24:29 AM

I recognize I may be a rarity here from people of discussed this with, but I can point to the games on Steam where I've logged the most hours (1000+ combined), and with the exception of Dragon Age, none of them really have any story at all.

I just can't fathom how story has seemingly trumped gameplay almost so insidiously that none of the newer generation of gamers seems to care.

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Ingmar
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Reply #1486 on: February 19, 2014, 11:30:24 AM

It's pretty simple. RPGs pretty much always had stories; as those got more complex and involved and interesting, people responded positively. So, people started putting it into other genres, it continued to get more positive response, and here we are.

It really seems to be action games where the 'problem' lies, if there is one, but that is a genre that I'm mostly not interested in so I can't really speak to the plusses and minuses.

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jakonovski
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Reply #1487 on: February 19, 2014, 11:30:41 AM

It's not even about story, it's about railroading. Taking the easiest way out because they can't or won't handle anything emergent.
Paelos
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Reply #1488 on: February 19, 2014, 11:35:06 AM

Well the problem with story as well, is that unless it involves a ton of options and paths, it has no replayability. Thus the railroading. I can't fathom paying $60 to play something once that may take 8 hours.

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Ingmar
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Reply #1489 on: February 19, 2014, 11:35:45 AM

It's not even about story, it's about railroading. Taking the easiest way out because they can't or won't handle anything emergent.

That often is a function of narrative though. If you have One Specific Story in mind, you can really only handle a fairly limited amount of branching before it gets incoherent.

Well the problem with story as well, is that unless it involves a ton of options and paths, it has no replayability. Thus the railroading. I can't fathom paying $60 to play something once that may take 8 hours.

I don't really disagree, maybe with the exception of adventure games like Telltale makes, but that's the other genre that has always been story-first, even more than RPGs.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2014, 11:38:48 AM by Ingmar »

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Reply #1490 on: February 19, 2014, 11:39:04 AM

Borderlands 2 has no branching choices, but the story is still entertaining after the 5th or 6th playthrough.

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Reply #1491 on: February 19, 2014, 11:44:10 AM

Borderlands 2 has no branching choices, but the story is still entertaining after the 5th or 6th playthrough.

Shame about the gameplay though.  why so serious?

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HaemishM
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Reply #1492 on: February 19, 2014, 11:45:23 AM

I just can't fathom how story has seemingly trumped gameplay almost so insidiously that none of the newer generation of gamers seems to care.

Easy. Game designers really really want to be movie directors but they have game design skills instead. And designing games means you only have to deal with other gamers/programmers/nerds instead of bitchy people like actors and producers who care about art, and how their characters should act as opposed to thinking the designer/writer is the greatest creator in the history of creation or who think this creation is art because what actor thinks anything beyond "oh it's a video game, this should be fun but not really serious."

See Chris Roberts and Ken Levine as two examples.

Fabricated
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Reply #1493 on: February 19, 2014, 12:08:39 PM

It's weird how no studio knows how to make the smallish sandboxy levels stuff anymore. It's either fullblown gigantic sandbox stuff like Assassin's Creed or A->B->C linear levels where you pick between air vents, sneaking through the front door, or just slaughtering everyone because you can apparently just do that too.

I'm not going to whine about this particular series getting a modern console makeover though. If you really, really just want Thief but with modern graphics and lighting go download and install The Dark Mod. It is made by, and for Thief autists and captures that feel rather well. It is also now completely standalone, having been rebuilt from the released Doom 3 source code.

If you want multiplayer Thief, go dig up your copy of UT99 (and go get a copy if you didn't have one wtf is wrong with you for missing the best Deathmatcher ever made) and also dig up an installer for Thievery which is also incredibly faithful to the Thief look/feel.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2014, 12:12:43 PM by Fabricated »

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Yegolev
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Reply #1494 on: February 19, 2014, 12:27:39 PM


Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
Sky
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Reply #1495 on: February 19, 2014, 12:50:51 PM

The sad thing is in ten years, there will still be activity on those forums and this crappy console generation Thief (Thi4f yuk yuk) will be an uncomfortable memory.
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Reply #1496 on: February 19, 2014, 01:12:44 PM

The bizarre-ass story from Thief 1 is still one of my all-time favorites.  I used to rotate cutscene art from that game as my desktop background for years.
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Reply #1497 on: February 19, 2014, 01:21:33 PM


I'm not going to whine about this particular series getting a modern console makeover though. If you really, really just want Thief but with modern graphics and lighting go download and install The Dark Mod. It is made by, and for Thief autists and captures that feel rather well. It is also now completely standalone, having been rebuilt from the released Doom 3 source code.

Reeaaalllllly.

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Miasma
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Reply #1498 on: February 19, 2014, 01:28:24 PM

I'm not really looking forward to the story for the new thief either.

Sky
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Reply #1499 on: February 19, 2014, 03:25:07 PM

The guilt over taking her prize possession, her...grappling hook?

I know what I'm getting my fiancee next Valentine's Day!

As gaming consumers we just need to stop hoping for older games to come back. Instead we should just pay for things that innovate at all, and pay for them over and over again while shunning the derivative shit until it's in the bargain bin.
This is why I back stuff on KS, even if it looks like it might not work out. For every TUG there is a Kingdom Come, and these dev houses need to know there is still a market for those games despite what the industry thinks behind it's walls of ignorance.
Margalis
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Reply #1500 on: February 19, 2014, 05:17:50 PM

I think the pendulum is starting to swing away from these types of games.

Look at the recent reveal of The Order for PS4. Met with a lot of "ho hums" and the developer interviews sound like self-parody. "It's totally not a QTE", talking up "walk and talk" like it's a great feature, using the word "filmic" three times a sentence. The game is basically AAA Video Game: The game, but the reaction to the reveal is muted. Meanwhile gameplay centric games like Minecraft, Rust, DayZ, etc, are blowing up.

Something that happened with platformers is that for a while they were super popular, then they imploded, and what was left were a few high-quality ones like Mario while most other ones stopped existing or were extremely niche. I think the same thing is going to happen with these "cinematic experience" games - they just cost too much to make and are too samey for everyone to be making them.

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Paelos
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Reply #1501 on: February 19, 2014, 05:22:10 PM

When even SOE is getting on the Minecraft wagon, you know the pendulum is swinging the right direction.

That doesn't mean we still don't have a few more years of backlog from stuff that started before the wind shifted. Sort of like the bad MMOs.

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Falconeer
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Reply #1502 on: February 20, 2014, 04:41:40 AM

I don't even know what it is, but Lestac looks beautiful to me.

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Reply #1503 on: February 20, 2014, 06:02:41 AM

I don't even know what it is, but Lestac looks beautiful to me.

Looks like a smallish platformer with combat being replaced by a gated barter system that is secretly a lecture about the nature of the industrial beast.

Basically, indie wank?
MrHat
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Reply #1504 on: February 20, 2014, 07:40:08 AM

Ran into this on Reddit:



I've ruled out Titanfall and The Order (that video 'leak' looked so QTE bad).

Destiny & Division I think still top the list for me.

Dark Souls, Witcher, Watch Dogs and Thief all look like Steam Sale pickups maybe.

Looking like a go broke kind of year.
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