Game musings and news

[Friday]

I'd be lying if I said seeing my old ps2 haunts didn't almost make my dead black heart stir a bit

almost

this isn't Mario RPG

[Büge]

Oh wow, uh

So Bethesda released an update for Skyrim today

Bricked my mod setup right proper, it did

[Mothra]

Grounded is super good, I'm loving this game. First survival craft 'n wham I've played since The Forest, and it just feels like every system has all the quality of life improvements I've always craved from these kinds of games. You can move full boxes of stuff around, you can parry, you can put together basic structures in the middle of nowhere with just an axe.

The setting and thus the exploration is probably the highlight for me. There's so many times when I'll be exploring an area and then come to this realization that I'm on a discarded glove, or fighting ants around a cookie, or running through an anthill, and it won't hit you until you notice something that makes you think bigger for one moment.

Big fan of how this game basically makes you act like a bug as you go about survival, crawling into soda cans to slurp up sugar water, or getting wrapped up in a spiderweb after being in a rush. Good stuff.

I like the way this and Forest told a story bit by bit, as you reached new areas or found evidence. I don't know how common having a story is to games like this but I remember them being completely absent from the likes of Space Engineers.

The combat gets kind of annoying in that most bugs seem to take 5 more hits than they should to kill. That said, once I really got into the Mutations menu and started getting the weird rare weapons, that improved things a lot. I journeyed into an overturned charcoal grill and forged a burning katana from the carapace of a rhino beetle. Pretty dope.

[Mongrel]

Oh wow, uh

So Bethesda released an update for Skyrim today

Bricked my mod setup right proper, it did

Ah shit, not again. I swear.

[Mongrel]

i completely skipped V after IV was what it was, maybe i'm ready for a gta again

probably not

To pass a lot of hours on night/weekend shifts at the last telco job, I watched a let's play of V which became increasingly uncomfortable, until it sort of went past that and I just wanted to punch all three of the variously insufferable protags in the dick.

It was a very interesting decision on the part of RockStar to make Typical Murderhobo Game Player an actual in-game character. I'd like to imagine it was a subtle commentary on the audience or on the nature of such games, but uh.

Meanwhile, Lamar was dumber than a crate of bent hammers, but I gave ten times more of a shit about him than I did the protags. He got that Extremely Stupid Dog in him, and I can't hate that.

[Niku]

Yeah, seeing the main trio of characters in pre-release stuff for V was a lot of the reason I just never had any interest, with the rest being just how absolutely rail-roaded the missions felt in IV with none of the player expression or wacky hijinx available that made the games a success in the first place. From a game design standpoint, I get it, it's hard to design the Lego experience on the box when the player can pull whatever bricks they want out of the big colorful jumbled up toy chest and do something completely off the wall, but it sure is a lot less fun to have the world completely reset at the start of a mission instead of your high-speed-chase starting off with the antagonist just full-stop slamming into the side of a bus and dying instantly or whatever.

[Mongrel]

I think a modern GTA in the style of the originals would be a hell of a lot of fun, but I guess that's just Saint's Row, isn't it?

[KingRoyal]

Played through a few hours of GTA V and thought it was pretty good. Combat is a lot better than it's ever been in the series, while still being chaotic and frustrating at times. Spends way too much time taking control away to Show Me Things, but that may be because I was in early game

For real though, the "modern GTA in the style of the originals" was GTA Online, which was all of GTA V but with an entirely new story designed for your mute character avatar. And with 31 other people in a lobby. You could even play entirely in a private lobby if you just wanted to hang with friends.

[Thad]

The second game in Digital Eclipse's Gold Master series will be Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story.

[Friday]

To pass a lot of hours on night/weekend shifts at the last telco job, I watched a let's play of V which became increasingly uncomfortable, until it sort of went past that and I just wanted to punch all three of the variously insufferable protags in the dick.

I've played through most of V and the part that really got to me was when it forces the player to torture a dude for no reason at all.

it made me really, really disgusted and then the follow up explanation (from Trevor himself!) that Trevor did it for no good reason and that torture never fucking works and he's just a sadistic fucking asshole ... was, well

I understand what Rockstar was trying to say, there, and maybe it needed to be said. I still think back to that scene and how it not only makes the player torture but like, pick the tools, press different button combos, etc. They MAKE the player do it. In a required mission for the story. And there's no discretion cutaways, the camera shows up close when you use a pair of pliers to remove the guy's tooth and blood goes squirting out. Like I spent that whole scene trying to pick the options that would cause the least long term damage, but like the options I ended up picking were horrendous as fuck, because there's no "good" torture.

I think I eventually decided that it was a "good" scene, but like man

I don't know if the people who need to understand that torture is awful and pointless are going to get the message. I think mostly that mission/scene just made a lot of moral people who already understood that torture is awful and pointless really uncomfortable.

and unlike the other recent controversial scene from a modern videogame, the Call of Duty level "No Russian", there's no option for the player to opt out. In No Russian, you can refuse to participate in the slaughter of innocents and just watch as the NPCs do it for you. The game also just gives you the option to skip the level. You cannot refuse to torture the guy in GTA V except by turning off the console. Which I almost fucking did, because seriously.

EDIT: I should also note that the game's version of the FBI (the FIB) are present in the room and basically hire Trevor to do their dirty work for them. This of course is fine, because in real life it's authoritarian organizations that do like 99% of the world's torture. I just wanted to set the correct context for people who haven't played the game and don't know about this scene. It's not Trevor doing the torture because he's just a random sadistic psychopath, it's Trevor doing the torture because he's a random sadistic psychopath AND an American policing organization hired him and told him to.

[Mongrel]

I think I eventually decided that it was a "good" scene, but like man

Yeah, like I said Trevor is really the in-game avatar of us, the classic murderhobo game player, and on some level they really, really want to rub that in.

In any case the torture was pretty bad, but the one mercy of it was that it's not a very long part of the game. The ongoing spiral of abuse Trevor inflicts on the guy whose place he just moves to felt worse because it was this prolonged nightmare you saw coming and getting worse and worse and you can't do shit about that either.

Ten years later and I still don't know how knowingly whoever wrote that stuff did so and how much of a bad or good idea it was to add that meta-commentary, if senior staff understood it on the same level as the scriptwriter, or what, really.

This reminds me of how around that same part of the game, I remembered the scene from the prerelease trailer where Trevor is stuffing something way too big down a toilet to get rid of it and I was increasingly convinced as the game went on that that was going to be that mob boss' wife's body, dismembered and hacked up by Trevor, because that was just the whole vibe of the story by then. It was only a small relief that the game didn't actually go THAT far.

[Brantly B.]

You know, I've never beaten a GTA game. I always assumed it's because they're long and I can't usually focus on games for that much time.

But then I just realized I've 100% completed Saint's Row 2, 3, 4, and Gat Out of Hell.

So my new working theory is I've never completed a GTA game because they're boring.

[Mongrel]

The first two were a hoot, but I get not liking the old 2D top-down model.

[Thad]

You know, I've never beaten a GTA game. I always assumed it's because they're long and I can't usually focus on games for that much time.

But then I just realized I've 100% completed Saint's Row 2, 3, 4, and Gat Out of Hell.

So my new working theory is I've never completed a GTA game because they're boring.

Somehow I've never even played a GTA game.

Or, well, I played the original a little bit in high school, but none of the ones people usually mean when they say "GTA game".

I did play all the way through Red Dead Redemption twice, though. Or, more precisely, I played right up to about 15 minutes before the end of the game, then my Xbox was stolen, then I started over from the beginning and played all the way through.

[François]

Playing GTA feels like your controller is plugged in the back of a little mechanical gnome who has his hands on the controller that is actually plugged into your console. The interface barely suffices for doing one thing at a time, then after a certain point the story missions ask you to do multiple things at once constantly.

It blows my mind that a series this long and this popular has been having controls this shit all this time. They must think they're doing it right somehow.

[beatbandito]

I was the exact age for Rockstar to hook me with the relative immersion of GTA3, but realized by San Andreas that was not a developmental leap that could be made every release.

The first ones were fun and I may have never played a legal copy, but have put in dozens of hours on various cracks and hacks.

[Mongrel]

I think some of the genius of the original games' fun was having that hammy commentator announce your powerups, special kills, etc. like some kind of goofball sportscaster commentary. I get that it wasn't compatible with the SRS BZNS reimagining of the series with GTA3, but it really was a great feature. I don't think even the Saint's Row games have that level of 4th wall-breaking silliness? Not sure, I've only played very very little of that series.

[Niku]

I think some of the genius of the original games' fun was having that hammy commentator announce your powerups, special kills, etc. like some kind of goofball sportscaster commentary. I get that it wasn't compatible with the SRS BZNS reimagining of the series with GTA3, but it really was a great feature. I don't think even the Saint's Row games have that level of 4th wall-breaking silliness? Not sure, I've only played very very little of that series.

Three definitely starts taking the piss out of itself and the GTA-alikes, and then Four just absolutely shatters it (it takes place essentially in the Matrix and your player character has ascended to be the President of the United States by this point).

If you wanted to play only one GTA3-style open world game, I'd recommend SRIV in a heartbeat. You don't REALLY need to know the characters/plots from the first several games (though there are fun callbacks if you do), and it straight up gives you superpowers instead of needing to run or drive everywhere. It also has one of the best video game ending twists of all time imo.

[beatbandito]

(it takes place essentially in the Matrix and your player character has ascended to be the President of the United States by this point).

also when you're not in the matrix you're in a very clearly mass effect-inspired hub where you can at any time press A to talk to a crew member or X to fuck them.

[Upthorn]

Just got linked to this on the hellsite:

This is truly amazing. Playing Link's Awakening at 1:1 pixel scale with 120 fps scrolling - you can zoom the map alllll the way out and the entire world is active.

https://linksawakeningdxhd.itch.io/links-awakening-dx-hd

Cool looking fan remake of a Nintendo IP.
Grab it before it gets nuked