henke on 3/7/2023 at 11:18
:)
Bramble's in the game pass btw.
Harvester on 3/7/2023 at 11:33
I'm playing through the Quake remaster. Done with the main game and the two Machine Games level packs, Dimensions of the Past and Dimensions of the Machine, which are really good! Now started on Scourge of Armagon, it's alright but the new enemies and weapons are poorly animated, and the music is pretty bad, a far cry from Trent Reznor's moody soundscapes for the original games (which also plays during the Machine Games levels). Also, I keep getting a bunch of shiny achievements (achievements which less than 10% of the players get), only a small percentage of players is actually playing the campaigns to completeness.
Thirith on 3/7/2023 at 12:01
Thanks for letting me know, henke! Like so often, I would have forgotten to check...
nicked on 3/7/2023 at 14:53
Quote Posted by Harvester
I'm playing through the Quake remaster. Done with the main game and the two Machine Games level packs, Dimensions of the Past and Dimensions of the Machine, which are really good! Now started on Scourge of Armagon, it's alright but the new enemies and weapons are poorly animated, and the music is pretty bad, a far cry from Trent Reznor's moody soundscapes for the original games (which also plays during the Machine Games levels). Also, I keep getting a bunch of shiny achievements (achievements which less than 10% of the players get), only a small percentage of players is actually playing the campaigns to completeness.
Bear in mind that the way Steam calculates it is off everyone who owns the game, and it's a free update to anyone who owns the original Quake. So that's 10% of everyone who's ever bought Quake on Steam. The percentage of people who have installed and played the remaster and have the achievements is probably much higher.
WingedKagouti on 3/7/2023 at 20:18
Quote Posted by Harvester
Now started on Scourge of Armagon, it's alright but the new enemies and weapons are poorly animated, and the music is pretty bad.
It's worth remembering that Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity were basically just mission packs by fans with a slightly higher budget than most mission packs. They were also released less than a year after Quake, so the quality being low compared to the game should be expected. At the time they were both quite notable achievements, but they're certainly lacking by today's standards.
Quote Posted by Tomi
It's also worth mentioning that Bramble is not much of a
game; you just follow the story and do whatever simple things to keep the story going,
The way you described the game reminded me of
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, which is not a bad game to be compared to IMO.
Yakoob on 4/7/2023 at 04:51
So I got Doom 2016 on Steam Sale and I have some very mixed feelings.
I bought it because I wanted a punchy combat and killing hordes of demons to help me turn my brain for a while. It does that very well but it will just. not. let. me. fucking. play.
Every few minutes there is some audio log, or a ghost to follow, or a new skill upgrade unlock, or some new piece of information, or a fucking cutscene that locks you in one room for 5 minutes until you are done listening to it. I DON'T CARE! Just let me blast demons!! Why are you stopping me from blasting demos!? It's fucking doom, demons invade mars, we get it, just let me shoot them!!!
You got the map, the audio logs, the quest markers, the weapon customization - but then you also get arcade health and ammo drops. You have your tactical pistol that requires time to charge up and be, well, tactical - yet you have super fast-ass demons shooting at you from every direction. You have big arenas to fight demons - and confusing mazes of corridors to backtrack through trying to find the next locked door or a secret.
It's like the game can't decide if it wants to be System Shock-lite, or just good old boomer shooter. It does the shooty shooty well, but then it keeps taking you away from the shooty shooty. Stop bogging me down Doom, let me just have fun!!
TL;DR Doom 2016 is an allegory to living with depression and I don't like it
p.s. the new shotgun sucks too : (
Sulphur on 4/7/2023 at 05:09
I was confused for a second because what you were describing sounded like Doom Eternal more than 2016. Yes, there's a few scenes that go story heavy and don't let you just get on with it (seemingly ignoring what the game itself makes fun of in the beginning), but everything else is... not necessary? You don't need to read or listen to the logs (though they're great, dumb fun - the corporate satire everything is laced with did earn some chuckles). I don't even remember the ghosts, that's how much they were there. You can just ignore them too and keep going. The non-action bits last for like 3% of the game's runtime, and I think Doom 3 had more story bits than 2016.
And, uh, don't use the pistol if you don't have to. Once you get other weapons, you almost never really need to get back to it because the demons are instant ammo-refills.
But anyway, if that riled you up, I dunno, Doom Eternal has more shit tacked on, but with also more game, so statistically you get more demon killing in. But it's also tweaked the combat in ways I found deeply irritating, has actual unskippable story shit, and worst of all, decides to take that story so seriously, it becomes the equivalent of sitting through someone reading out a second-tier fantasy prog metal lyric sheet while channelling the voice of Patton Oswalt. What a disappointment that was.
Jason Moyer on 4/7/2023 at 05:24
Doom 2016 was alright, but it felt more like Painkiller if Painkiller was stingy on ammo than a Doom game to me.
nicked on 4/7/2023 at 05:54
Yeah if Doom 2016 has too much story for you, definitely don't bother with Doom Eternal. It doubles down on every aspect of Doom 2016 that didn't really work and detracted from the experience.
Sulphur on 4/7/2023 at 07:00
Meanwhile, I finished Atomic Heart, and... yeah. It's a decent game, if buggy. Looks great, as you know. Optimised really well. The overall combat mechanics are fine, there's nothing too egregious, but it gets samey towards the end. (And very easy if you rinse the optional research labs early on like I did.) It's essentially Bioshock in the USSR, there's no escaping that - but it ditches the poor stealth and goes all in as a shooter (with 'plasmids'), for the better. While there is 'stealth', the game's loading screens tell you plainly that you shouldn't bother with it - and really, going silent is about as useful as sticking your thumb up your nose. Combat is tactile and a bit heavy, and going melee zap wizard where you get in close to and thwack to recharge electricity-based weapons is a viable, fun change-up from just shooting shit ad infinitum. There's a decent smattering of upgrades that feed into a Pavlovian upgrade loop, and you can just do conventional shooty-shoot with fire and frost if you want it.
The story is... whew. There's a bunch to unpack there, but it doesn't amount to much. It's amateurishly unspooled and executed, halfway hitting you on the head with its critique of the USSR and political shenanigans while simultaneously positioning you as a willing pawn in it all, which leads to a very interesting ending that actually out-Bioshocks Bioshock. You get a choice at a point towards the end, and the correct option is exactly the one that Bioshock didn't let you go with - fuck this game, we're ending this story on our own terms, and getting the fuck out. Most people will take the more obvious choice the game's been leading you towards, and it is a ballsy fucking ending in that your dim hick self unwittingly unleashes a terrible threat to humanity that was riding in you all along vs. the threat you thought you were going to stop, and then the game ends.
It's deeply unsatisfying, and I respect the hell out of them for doing it, even if the execution was not what I'd call a well-written story. 6.5/10, would have been a 7 if they figured out the audio bugs and some of the jank.
