Tomi on 22/8/2024 at 20:17
Nostalgia plays a big role in here of course. It was a good game in 2001, but if you're playing it for the first time 23 years later, you probably won't be too impressed. RtCW had its flaws even in 2001; bullet sponge enemies and forced stealth being my least favourite things, but the atmosphere was incredible, the gunplay felt good and the delivery of the story was great. Too bad the latter half of the game turned a bit too weird and supernatural for me.
Did anyone ever play Wolfenstein (2009) by Raven Software? It's the only game in the series that I haven't played, and nowadays it's not available anywhere.
Harvester on 22/8/2024 at 20:53
I quit at the first stealth level. Even when done well, I tolerate stealth gameplay rather than like it, and this was a terrible stealth level. I joined TTLG because of System Shock and later Deus Ex, not Thief. I couldn’t even get through the admittedly very charming Beyond Good & Evil.
Starker on 22/8/2024 at 22:02
Even if you get past all the stealth sections in Beyond Good and Evil, there's a gimmicky boss fight awaiting at the end that many people hated passionately.
henke on 23/8/2024 at 10:46
I liked the stealth in RtCW. It wasn't very good, but I liked the fact that you could stealth some of it. I even tried stealthing some bits that really weren't meant to be stealth sections.
I've been playing a bit of Call of Chtulhu 2018. Made it through the sleepy fishing town section, got to the creepy mansion section and got so bored I gave up. Watched a bit of Grimbeard's video about it, got intrigued, played some more. I'm now in the spooky asylum and the game is giving me a proper challenge for the first time, with a stealth bit where you sneak around and try to figure out how to escape. It feels a lot like Thief 2014 actually, because of the aesthetic, a lot of hand animations, and the asylum setting.
Malf on 23/8/2024 at 13:02
Quote Posted by Tomi
Did anyone ever play Wolfenstein (2009) by Raven Software? It's the only game in the series that I haven't played, and nowadays it's not available anywhere.
I've played it through to completion before, and last started replaying it in 2020.
It's pretty good, although it goes
hard on the supernatural stuff, and ends up feeling less well realised than other entries. It also suffers from coming from the era of games with different vision modes, resulting in you playing the game a lot of the time with an aggressive teal filter over everything as you swap to the "other world".
It's a perfectly fine Raven 7/10 game, much like Quake 4.
Interestingly, the town map in this version shares some of the street layout of RtCW, which is a nice throwback.
I've not played Youngblood, having been put off by the whiff of Live Service taint, but I would say RtCW remains my favourite, followed by The New Order.
I wasn't quite as taken with The Old Blood as most people, and The New Colossus left a nasty taste in my mouth, not being as focussed or complete as The New Order. This is also where they started playing with making the game "endless", and I feel the game suffered for it.
I would say that for me, Wolfenstein 2009 probably sits between The New Colossus and The Old Blood. Well worth a playthrough if you can get a hold of it somehow, but eh, doesn't matter if not.
Sulphur on 24/8/2024 at 08:08
So I played Slay the Princess. I slew the princess. The end. 6/10.
I've spent the last 8 months, I think, playing God of War: Ragnarok. No, no, it's not what you're thinking - it's not that I love it so much that I'm doing several playthroughs. I've played it for like 30 minutes to an hour every couple of weeks or so. But it's a pretty good game, you might have heard, so clearly something must be an issue with the player, you presume.
You may be right. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something about these large games that subtly turns me off. They look good, they sound good, they feel good, and yet... when it comes to a choice about playing God of Boy: Boy Again or doing literally anything else, I find myself preferring to watch Bucket List of the Dead instead. So what is it that makes me not yearn to play Deity of Conflict: Nordling Apocalypse Party? I suspect it's the rut of the well-worn groove. Let me elaborate: there's a very obvious formula to everything in this game. There's a sort of closed-open space, and it's littered with enemies, collectibles, treasures, puzzles that lead to treasures that help you increase your stats, quests that give you gear that incorporate all of the above, etc. And just like Horizon: Forbidden West, the game itself disappears in front of me, and what I see is ley lines that connect all of these elements together in what the game's real over-arching quest is: to level up your shit so combat isn't a pain in the ass.
And combat's pretty good, no word of a lie. Playing it on hard, though: feels like pulling teeth. Damage sponges. 1 or 2-hit KO's. Fuck that noise, go with normal. However, for all the different weapons, attack options, satisfying parrying and meaty thwacking every time you slap an enemy around but good, it feels a bit empty. Maybe that's me being jaded, maybe that's the story hitting a series of obvious checkpoints, maybe it's all of the above.
But maybe it's also that games like this have forgotten how to do something important: you know what God of War 2018's best asset was? It took Kratos and attempted to make him human. Then it shattered the trees in the forest around him, knocked him into the fucking air in an unbroken camera shot and plummeted him down onto the roof his house, and in the ensuing fight dropped an entire boulder on Baldur. It's all apropos of nothing, but it's an immediate hook that makes you want to know what the fuck is even going on. The rest of the game then carefully tells you how things got there, which is, honestly where it sort of lost steam for me. But that opening! *chef's kiss*
So what is it that's missing, then? I think, probably, it's the ability to constantly surprise. GoW 2018 was a huge-ass subversion all by itself if you compare it to the original 3 (and a direction that Jaffe has stated that he did not like, for the record). So how does Ragnarok compare, and what does it do that subverts expectations or plays on your gamer sense of intrigue to compel you to keep playing, or switch up how you play it? If I'm being honest, not a whole lot. If I'm being brutally honest, it falls into a pattern of repetition that feels a little too much like work. It's fun work, sometimes, but is that really good enough? For me, not really. If you want me to come back to your game that's dozens of hours long and finish it, the thing you should do isn't just adding on to your formula, but I need it to break a little bit, too. Half-Life 2 did that with the gravity gun at the end, and that was honestly one of my favourite parts of the whole damn thing. It feels like the game knows you earned it, and it's a subversion of that moment in HL1 where you lose all your weapons. In the moment, what happens next is genius. And I think we deserve more of that instead of formulaic whoop-a-thons.
Thirith on 27/8/2024 at 06:53
I'm okay with the occasional formulaic game, provided that it does some things really, really right. Sometimes I want a game that is enjoyable on a moment-by-moment basis but that I don't have to invest myself in. But when the game in question is really long, and especially when its combat focuses on damage-sponge enemies, it's more likely than not that my initial, relatively superficial enjoyment of the game tips over into resentment. God of War (2018) got close to this but finally wasn't so long that I turned against it, but from what I've heard, Ragnarok crosses that line and then stays there for another 20 hours or so. I'm sure I'll play it eventually, but at this stage I just get tired thinking about such games.
On a more positive note: I had put my Thief 2 playthrough on hiatus because they're doing work around the flats where I live and they'd removed all the blinds in July - brilliant timing on their part, since this is the brightest and hottest time of the year. My screen is good, but with games like Thief I'd normally want to make the room as dark as possible, which I can't do at the moment. However, it's getting darker earlier in the evening, so while I still wouldn't play Thief in the afternoon right now (unless it's very cloudy outside), I can play in the evening without having to squint at the screen. I'm probably halfway through Soulforge and it's good to be back.
And finally: I got started on Dead Cells again, because of the final update to the game and because Malf mentioned it recently. The moment-to-moment gameplay is great fun and highly addictive, but as before it's starting to feel somewhat hollow. The game is more or less perfect at being what it sets out to be, but I realise that I tire quickly of roguelikes/roguelites, especially if I don't find the characters and game world all that engaging. In that respect, Hades is more my kind of thing, even though I like the gameplay of Dead Cells better, because I am given more of a reason to persist.
WingedKagouti on 27/8/2024 at 13:25
These last weekends I've actually played
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkham_Horror:_The_Card_Game) Arkham Horror The Card Game more than I've played computer games. And while it's a card game with expansions, it's a Living Card Game meaning that you buy packs or boxes with fixed content, instead of something like Magic the Gathering. I mostly got it because the rules are made so that single player is (almost) the same as playing with 2-4 players. A game starts with selecting a scenario (which can be part of a longer campaign), which comes with a story and has rules for which encounter and location cards are used as well as victory and loss conditions, then players select an investigator and build a deck with the restrictions noted on the back of their card. A scenario will also specify where players start and in some cases how they move from location to location.
The gameplay itself is turn based with the main limitations on players being how many resources they have, the amount of cards in their hand and how many actions they are allowed to take each turn. After every player has taken their turn, the monsters move and attack, players then draw a new card and get one resource (unless an ability states otherwise). The turn then ends, a doom counter is added to the scenario (effectively counting the amount of turns you have) and each player draws an encounter card. Encounter cards offer a wide range of effects from a monster spawning (often on top of the player drawing the card) to the player having to make a test to avoid a bad outcome or just something bad happening with few options to avoid it (usually requires playing a specific card from hand). Then the players get to take their turn. The turn ending before the doom counter is added is important, as some cards trigger upon the turn ending, including several scenario cards only allowing progress at the end of the turn.
In the spirit of Lovecraft's writings, victory is never guaranteed and even a moderate "You managed to not be horribly mutilated or driven insane" can be the best possible story outcome of a scenario. But the game also has rules for improving your investigator after each scenario, which is done by spending experience earned in the scenario on better cards (you still have to follow the restrictions for your investigator). Campaigns usually have some penalty for failing a single scenario, ranging from taking permanent physical and/or mental damage to lacking critical resources needed to successfully complete the campaign. And the final few scenarios in a campaign tend to have the harshest penalities, sometimes preventing anything but a bad ending, even if you had done everything else needed to get a good ending.
Aja on 27/8/2024 at 15:00
Quote Posted by Sulphur
You may be right. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something about these large games that subtly turns me off. They look good, they sound good, they feel good, and yet... when it comes to a choice about playing God of Boy: Boy Again or doing literally anything else, I find myself preferring to watch Bucket List of the Dead instead.
I feel the same way about most of the Sony flagship games. Ratchet and Clank, Spiderman, Horizon, AstroBot, and, to a lesser extent, GOW 2018: they all look great, sound great, have ridiculous production values, but the lack of -- I don't really know how to put it -- friction, I guess, makes them feel more like big-budget mobile games than something immersive and thought provoking. And to be clear, I'm not talking about the quality of the stories but more the games' ability to leave a lasting impact, the sort of game that I think about when I'm not playing it. I've had moments of fun playing all of the above, but it usually happens in a single session, and then I never go back because there's no pull. Horizon is probably the farthest I got, but that's only because it made a good before-bed game, and it still wasn't nearly as compelling as the new Zeldas. I dunno. These games play it way too safe, and they're boring as a result.
At least Ragnarok has Richard Schiff, which is almost enough for me to want to play it, but I'm probably better off just watching his cutscenes on YouTube.
I'm more disappointed about Slay the Princess being a 6/10. It's been on my list for ages; I was just waiting for the big update they keep talking about.
Sulphur on 27/8/2024 at 16:26
Quote Posted by Thirith
I'm okay with the occasional formulaic game, provided that it does some things really, really right. Sometimes I want a game that is enjoyable on a moment-by-moment basis but that I don't have to invest myself in. But when the game in question is really long, and especially when its combat focuses on damage-sponge enemies, it's more likely than not that my initial, relatively superficial enjoyment of the game tips over into resentment.
God of War (2018) got close to this but finally wasn't so long that I turned against it, but from what I've heard,
Ragnarok crosses that line and then stays there for another 20 hours or so. I'm sure I'll play it eventually, but at this stage I just get tired thinking about such games.
Pretty much! Part of my issue is that it is, in fact fatiguing to play in long bursts for a 20+ hour game - the press said that it was essentially two sequels in one, which is somewhat hyperbolic, but it's definitely got a lot of Norse mythology it wants to churn through before the end - and the other part is that there's actual Ubisoft-style cruft in there which is optional, but you still want to go for it because there's goodies at the end of the sidequest rainbow. Very much victim of my own proclivities in that aspect, but I'd feel better if there was more substantial payoff in terms of fun character moments and stories - which are sort of there, but often variable in impact and it's hard to predict which one's worth your while because there's a fair bunch.
Quote Posted by Aja
I feel the same way about most of the Sony flagship games. Ratchet and Clank, Spiderman, Horizon, AstroBot, and, to a lesser extent, GOW 2018: they all look great, sound great, have ridiculous production values, but the lack of -- I don't really know how to put it -- friction, I guess, makes them feel more like big-budget mobile games than something immersive and thought provoking. And to be clear, I'm not talking about the quality of the stories but more the games' ability to leave a lasting impact, the sort of game that I think about when I'm not playing it. I've had moments of fun playing all of the above, but it usually happens in a single session, and then I never go back because there's no pull. Horizon is probably the farthest I got, but that's only because it made a good before-bed game, and it still wasn't nearly as compelling as the new Zeldas. I dunno. These games play it way too safe, and they're boring as a result.
That's a very good point about friction. I level that criticism at any formulaic open-world game from the Ubisoft stables or falling in the inspired-by category, and while Ragnarok isn't exactly a map game, it also very much is in that each of its maps slings you around template-y activities and errands in a similar fashion. I think GoW's generally more creative about making them more involved than any Ubisoft open-worlder, but it's still in the same general vicinity of mildly entertaining busywork. The problem with busywork is that after you do enough of it, it's just work.
Quote:
At least Ragnarok has Richard Schiff, which is almost enough for me to want to play it, but I'm probably better off just watching his cutscenes on YouTube.
He does a pretty interesting Odin, I'll give it that.
Quote:
I'm more disappointed about Slay the Princess being a 6/10. It's been on my list for ages; I was just waiting for the big update they keep talking about.
I was being facetious - I poked around for about 30 minutes total before I found out that there's that big update. It made sense for me to wait for it (ETA: 2024, apparently) before I went on, so I did the internet thing of being an internet person, and did a hot take for internet poops and chuckles. Je suis désolé.
