Game musings and news

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Mongrel
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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Mongrel » Sat Jul 09, 2022 1:41 am

Brand new contender for Greatest Skyrim Mod of All Time

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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Mongrel » Sat Jul 09, 2022 11:19 pm

Though this comes close - After 11 years, one of Skyrim modding's holy grails finally comes to be: A genuine and fully-functional* multiplayer mode.

*(vanilla game is 100% fine - multiplayer modded games are certainly possible, though not all mods can be accommodated)
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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Mongrel » Tue Jul 12, 2022 6:46 pm

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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Newbie » Tue Jul 12, 2022 10:32 pm

Yeah, I'm a fan.
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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Mongrel » Wed Jul 13, 2022 5:26 am

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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Mongrel » Fri Jul 29, 2022 9:09 pm

Hee hee
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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Thad » Tue Aug 02, 2022 1:46 pm

Metal Slime wrote:An Actraiser remake? Yay! It looks like they started on mobile and then scaled up the graphics poorly in places...? Oh.

Well, it plays fine so far at least? It just looks like one of those GBA games that tried to copy DKC graphics for the platforming stages.

I got it on sale and I'm enjoying it. The new bits of plot mostly work for me; they flesh things out a little without overcomplicating it.

The biggest addition is the RTS segments, and I think for the most part they work pretty well. Basic RTS alongside basic platforming and basic city-building/god game stuff works pretty well I think. There are maybe too many of them, but it's not overwhelming.

They have moved some of the events around in ways that fuck up the pacing. Bloodpool learns how to grow rice way later than in the original game, and it's not at all clear at first what the point is of connecting them to Fillmore. Similarly, I assume Kasandora eventually develops music (as the quest where people in Bloodpool are fighting one another and waiting for some kind of fix is underway) but it's been like an hour since I found the body in the desert and still no music, so it really weakens the original game's conceit that the music was an expression of sorrow at the man's death.

The quest system is half-baked (some quests have to be active for you to do them, like sealing monsters' lairs, while other quests work passively if you meet their requirements even if the quest isn't set as active), and I'm not sure why there's an inventory screen at all anymore, much less why heroes' XP are handled as consumable items instead of just applying automatically like the Master's XP do.

It also feels less like you're exploring these lands and finding hidden secrets. You learn spells as part of the regular plot progression now, and you gain MP by finding them in the platforming stages (which, let's face it, is annoying; it's nice being able to go back to the platforming stages to play them again after you've completed them, but having to go back to find hidden items you missed ain't great, especially since you don't keep them if you quit out of the stage partway through; you have to finish the entire fucking level again, including the boss, to get any MP upgrades you missed), and AFAICT 1ups don't exist at all and you get a set number of lives at the beginning of each level based on your difficulty setting. (5 on Normal, which up to this point has always been more than enough.) It's lost the original game's sense that if you zap the right rock or approach the right corner of the map you could find something special.

They've also nerfed the earthquake, which is fucking irritating. The entire point of the earthquake in the original game was that you could use it to clear every single lower-level building from the map in one shot. You can't do that anymore; first of all, it no longer covers the entire map, and second, it no longer ignores level 3 structures. It's just more-expensive lightning now.

All in all, I'm really enjoying it. It's got some rough edges, but it always did. Some things work better than the original game, some don't work as well, but I'm glad to see the level of attention they put into making something different instead of just a straight port. I'd love to see more games in the same vein. Or see if SE has the rest of Quintet's library and would like to do something with it.

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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Mongrel » Sun Aug 07, 2022 1:49 am


Honestly this is as adorable as it is hilarious. Some fans just trying their damnedest.
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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Büge » Mon Aug 08, 2022 3:17 pm



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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Thad » Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:55 pm

You can finally play Sony’s Spider-Man on PC—but it’s not all good news (yet)

Such complaints might be moot when Spider-Man launches on Friday, August 12—and we sure hope so. At its best, this game does whatever a PC rig can, delivering ultra-wide ratios, super-charged graphical settings, higher frame rates, and increased ray tracing depth. But while it looks great on a super-charged PC and impresses on hardware as weak as a Steam Deck, it's tough for me to comfortably recommend Spider-Man on midrange gaming rigs.


Sounds like you might want to wait for the patch, but for those of you who don't have a PS4 but do have a gaming PC, check this one out; it's one of the best games I've played in years.

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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Niku » Wed Aug 10, 2022 8:06 pm

I keep saving Miles Morales for the day I finally get a PS5 even knowing it's perfectly cromulent on the PS4.
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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Thad » Fri Aug 19, 2022 5:58 pm

Embracer Group to swallow up Tripwire, Tuxedo Labs, The Lord of the Rings

By that last thing he means they're buying Middle-Earth Enterprises, the company that handles licensing for The Hobbit and LotR.

They're also buying Limited Run Games, which I guess means they're going to be Parish's bosses, sort of. But presumably that won't stop Retronauts from helpfully reminding readers that THQ Nordic loves pedonazis.

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Re: Game musings and news

Postby IGNORE ME » Tue Aug 23, 2022 11:27 am

They made a new Saint's Row.

Oh hey tha-

EGS Exclusive.

Don't talk to me again.

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Re: Game musings and news

Postby hngkong » Tue Aug 23, 2022 11:39 am

Oh, so it comes out sometime next year.

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Re: Game musings and news

Postby beatbandito » Tue Aug 23, 2022 12:31 pm

already cracked
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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Thad » Tue Aug 23, 2022 12:53 pm

Brentai wrote:They made a new Saint's Row.

Oh hey tha-

EGS Exclusive.

Don't talk to me again.

If it makes you feel any better, Ars Technica called it a "mess beyond redemption".

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Re: Game musings and news

Postby Mongrel » Tue Aug 23, 2022 2:10 pm

Wow, even without the text portion of the review, those screenshots look damningly dead.
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Re: Game musings and news

Postby beatbandito » Tue Aug 23, 2022 3:01 pm

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Re: Game musings and news

Postby beatbandito » Thu Aug 25, 2022 12:42 pm

Thad wrote:If it makes you feel any better, Ars Technica called it a "mess beyond redemption".

I was inspired to play the game right away largely due to this review. And oh boy does it completely miss the point.

Two notes: I hate the forced personality on this boss, but w/e it happens in most of the series. And all dialogue has indeed sucked in an unfunny way so far.

But nothing about the opening is unclear. I guess I'll quote the whole text block:

The trouble begins as you attempt to make sense of what's going on in this game, which structurally resembles any GTA-like game of the past 15 years. As a professional criminal, you take on gigs to raise your notoriety, either through linear campaign levels or various missions dotted around an open-world map. The game opens with you hanging out with three housemates, each with their own hustles and enterprises on the side, and these characters' voice acting and camaraderie are solid enough. Too bad you barely spend time with them. Instead, you'll waste the campaign's first five hours working for some kind of American black ops organization, all while dressing like a counterfeit cosplay knockoff of Master Chief.

Are you dismantling criminal rings? Battling terrorists? Doing dirty work for a government that needs secrets buried? It's all unclear because the dialogue in these missions mostly focuses on your character bickering with their commanding officer in repetitive, unfunny fashion. These missions take place on largely linear paths and offer few creative or amusingly over-the-top paths to success. Run forward, shoot basic pistols and machine guns, and repeat, with an occasional crudely animated cutscene suggesting that these missions are more exciting than they really are.

Why are these linear levels not overcharged with, say, a full arsenal of shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, a tank driving on top of another tank, or other ridiculousness that matches the irreverence of the series' past 15 years? Is it because the writers at Volition want me to care about a whiny commanding officer who otherwise doesn't exist in the course of normal gameplay? If this portion of the game is supposed to be fun or funny, I sure didn't get it.

This series of missions ends abruptly, with little clarity about why your black-ops workload has vanished. Instead, your roommates run into trouble with local gangs in this game's fictional version of Las Vegas, dubbed Santo Ileso, and your response is to start your own gang.


The game starts with a shitty "how'd I git here?!?!" flash-forward. After that though we see a promo video for The Marshalls, an ultra-violent PMC take on G.I. Joe. They talk about helping people while showing footage of unloading a chaingun into a car heading towards an old woman on a city street. This is an orientation video your character is watching on the way to the first mission (both those points said outright in dialogue). You chase after an enemy you don't know except that they wear the other color as you and talk in accents in an old western town. Immediately on taking control the entire rest of your platoon is taken out with one rocket, while you can bounced around a chain of explosions. You just get up and complain about how much work this is for your first day.

After a frankly way too long tutorial area where you can only fail and restart in one section and everything is murky brown and dark and hard to see you get to the big bad boss, who is just El Mariachi from the Desperado movies. He's also a superhuman and you fight on a techy harrier jet destroying this old wooden mining town while enemies come out from corners yipping and firing rifles while you blow up boxes of TNT next to them. Eventually you catch the baddy and it cuts back to a locker room where you get yelled at by the senior officer that doesn't like rash rookies. Going outside you complain about your first day at a crappy new job and drive home where you're told about your friend's issues through a series of voice mails.

It's not particularly well done or funny, but you have to act willfully to describe this section as unfittingly as that article does. Also I'm assuming there are going to be more missions with Marshall, but I am doing open-world crime with the friends after about 30 minutes of actual playthrough time. I do hope at least some of the dialogue I am constantly subjected to is eventually entertaining, but this game so far is pretty much exactly what I expect from saint's row.
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Re: Game musings and news

Postby beatbandito » Thu Aug 25, 2022 4:52 pm

I made it to the point where you form the Saint's now. No play time in the save file, but I'd believe I was controller in hand for 5 hours. That was doing a lot of side fuckery, though. Just the main story missions, probably more like 2 hours.

The path through the story missions is incredibly basic and linear with one surprise for me based on my expectations of the series:

1) You do the above-mentioned first mission shootout as part of Marshall and come home.
2) 2 missions learning about side gigs, stealing cars and other basics with your gang friends. Establishing your relationships.
3) Second Marshall mission, this time you're taking something from one of the local gangs that one of your three friends is in and they're pissed about it.
4) Helping out a friend you end up fighting the second gang which your 2 of 3 friends is a part of, they're pissed about it.
5) Third Marshall mission. You got recognized by the boss and are security on a big party. Surprisingly here instead of the third gang and friend, this is just both the other gangs again. You end up failing to protect something and are fired from Marshall. The missions do not end abruptly with little clarity. You would have to be skipping every single cutscene to not understand what's happening, and even then chatter during the action could give it away most of the time.
6) Your roommates "run in to trouble with the local gangs" when the two gangs go to war with each other. Both ganged up members choose to protect you and the third roommate and are expelled from their gangs. You even start the gang because the pre-established CEO motivational books-on-tape that the shot roommate likes to listen to give a speech that is highly relevant to the current situation you've been placed in.

During the escape mission right before forming the saints you're handed an unlimited RPG and go to town on the pursuers. They did remove ragdolls and launching during crashes, but because they made ramming and towing big parts of vehicle combat, instead of just leaning out a window and shooting. It's just like, every aspect of that article is wrong on purpose, as a joke.

I was disappointed there was no third gang for the third friend. Usually you get 3 street gangs plus the police (Marshall, here) is the final gang to push out. Also, while I do think the writing started to shape up as far as general humor, there's a lot of weird little holes in logic that don't have to exist and feel like either dialogue was never recorded or two parts of a mission got moved around and it originally wouldn't have been issues.

Honestly it's extra disappointing as a EGS exclusive, because other than one hard crash that made me repeat a mission, this has been a pretty fun game so far.
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