Whatcha playin? (Video games wise.)

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
The Drifter said:
Also: There's a WRPG that hits in May on the PS4, PC, 360 and PS3. Has anyone heard about this? It's on my radar for sure. (Finn, I'm sure that you've heard about it.)
In passing. RPGs set in a fantasy land seem dime a dozen, so it's kinda difficult to get excited unless being part of an established IP. Because it's not like I'm craving for yet another opportunity to hack things into little bits with a sword and perhaps some magic, while having talky-times inbetween. I don't mean to pan it, but if it had a setting a little more unorthodox, like say, some kind of modern spy caper (such as Alpha Protocol a few years back, objectively a pretty crappy game but played it for the setting anyway) or pirates, I might actually hope it turns out to be good.

Of course, if this one does, it will likely go to the to-play list. But I'm definitely waiting to see what the hive mind thinks of it before I bother to get excited.

---

Looks like it's been a while since I've been to this thread. Kinda logical, since I didn't want to turn my posts into daily logs of "what I did in Skyrim today". Though that does not actually explain my absence since January, because that was when I finally realized that with the way I was playing the game, wrapping it up would take me a while. All the while the backlog bloats further on. So one day, roughly three months ago, I just left my Dovahkiin sitting in the Bannered Mare, waiting for some kind of hush-hush meeting he was to have that evening with some of the Companions. By that moment, roughly three to four months had passed in-game, and in that time I had been to six of the Skyrim's nine (or eight-and-half) major settlements, had advanced the main story up to a point where Delphine told me she was to do some due diligence on the Thalmor - and left all other major story strands save for the Companions pretty much untouched. Mostly because from the overarching story perspective, it made sense to me. While the actual gamespace is greatly compressed, in-lore Skyrim is a big place, so things happening there should take time.

I fully intend to go back one day and see the rest it has to offer, but right now it's on hiatus while I have a go at other things. And thus far, said things have been Remember Me, Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Assassin's Creed Liberation. Currently underway is Black Flag.


Without further ado, brief impressions of them...

Remember Me is a game that essentially holds tons of promise, but the execution falls flat. The premise deserves so much more than a linear corridor beat-em-up with some ****-easy platforming in-between. Which is why I hope it gets a sequel. In a sense, it's a game like the very first Assassin's Creed or Hitman way back when. In other words, games that display plenty of promise and originality, but on execution, are little more than technology and gameplay demos. However, both got did get sequels that simply fixed everything wrong with their predecessors, and helped turn said IPs into modern classics. I'd say Dontnod deserves another shot at it too.

Blacklist finally brings back the Sam we've been waiting for from 2005 onwards. It is, simply put, the best Splinter Cell since Chaos Theory. Thanks to its attempts to pander the fans of myriad of playstyles, it does not quite reach the levels of the first three titles in the series (for example, stealth is still a binary choice, either you're fully hidden or not), but it finally truly rewards being subtle and thinking out-of-the-box again. Thumbs up.

AC Liberation is pretty much what you'd expect from Assassin's Creed at this point. All the pieces are there, plus a gimmick of its own, which in this case is the disguise mechanic. If you're a fan of the series, you'll likely find this one fun too as long as it lasts. If not, it's still not a bad game but you won't miss anything earth-shattering.

Black Flag... I'll give my lasting impression once I'm done, but yeah, it's at the very least the second best entry to the series. I'll wait 'til the credits until I say whether it's actually better than Brotherhood. But given how suspicious I was of its foundations and the current series development cycle in general, I'll have to grudgingly tip my hat to Ubi for actually pulling it off.
 

S. Dakota Jones

New member
I keep bouncing between South Park, GTA5, and Mass Effect 3, and Last of Us - all of them first time playthroughs.

It's really weird because I'm notorious for only playing through one game at a time. This time around though, it feels like I just can't focus on one game long enough to play just one game though.
 

The Drifter

New member
Well, I beat Thief on the PS4 the other day. I went into the game as a virgin, as I have never played the past Thief games before, but I've always heard good things about them. I thought that this Thief was a decent game. Not great, not horrible, but decent.
The gameplay was good. The stealth mechanics worked well. You stay in the shadows and avoid the light. You can use different arrows (such as water arrows) to snuff out lit torches, and you can blow out candles as well. It's simple, but it's fun and it does it's job pretty well.
You can play through the whole game without laying a hand on anyone, or you can sneak up behind them and knock them out with a well placed smack with your blackjack.

If a guard or other enemy does happen to spot you, you'd be better off just reloading the last save point instead of fighting them. Combat consist of nothing but blindly swinging your blackjack in hopes that you knock the guard out before he kills you.
The story in the game is the main weak point. It's sort of dull, but it has it's cool moments. The ending was horrible, and sort of pissed me off.

Also, you'll get lost a lot traversing The City. You'll be wondering how to get to different sections, and you'll be spending a great deal of time wondering around like a drunk. The map is useless, so I didn't even bother with it for the most part.
The game looks nice on the PS4. Great texture work. The environments are moody and varied. Chapter five was one of the best chapters that I've seen in a long time.
All-in-all, I give Thief a 6/10.

Up next is the revamped Tomb Raider on the PS4.
 

S. Dakota Jones

New member
I played the first Thief when it came out and really enjoyed it. Some of it was downright spooky in parts. They really did the emphasize, even then, that you are not a fighter. You had a sword but even one on one, you were outmatched and usually took a lot of damage before killing a guard. 2 or more guards just meant run and hide or die.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
The Drifter said:
Sorry for the double-post, but I found an article that claims that the next Assassin's Creed title will take place in and around Paris, France.

By now we all know that it does. And while I should be excited for the chance to run around a 1:1 recreation of 18th Century Paris I'm extremely hesitant. I detested part two, enjoyed part three, and was so bored by Black Flag that I haven't touched it in months. Ubisoft could have made perhaps the first great AAA-pirate game and cocked it up with a hoary sailing system, the crappy implementation of an "economy" and the perennially stupid meta narrative. I fully expect another hatchet job on one of the most important moments in history.

Got five hundred bucks lying around? Do pick up a both volumes of Dictionnaire Historique Des Rues De Paris. See what Paris was like, and what the street names were, before Baron Hausmann was given the mother of all remodeling jobs by Napoleon III.

 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Finn said:
Maybe about halfway through, it's no doubt forming out to be one of the better sandbox titles I've played, even if there really is nothing groundbreaking here. The devs at United Front have simply taken the most common conventions of the genre and given them an extra layer of polish, resulting in a highly enjoyable game.

Sleeping Dogs was something of a surprise for me. I wasn't expecting it to leave such a lasting impression, but it did, and one of my earnest desires was to see a fully realized sequel on the new hardware. And now with the official announcement of The Definitive Edition, we might be getting closer to hearing Triad Wars isn't a crappy mobile game.


If you haven't played it yet, I recommend picking it up for the PS4 or X-Box One. Sure, it'll set you back a full $60 but you'll get every piece of DLC that United Front developed. It's probably the first game (series?) not developed by Rockstar that could be a legitimate rival to the Grand Theft Auto cash cow. While there's nothing really revolutionary on display, it has, as Finn said, a high level of polish, strong emphasis on story and characterization, and using Hong Kong's draconian gun laws in its favor for a solid melee system.

A cropped screenshot with the upgraded visuals. Swing by the one-eyed monkey sauna for the full-size image.

http://www.doublejump.co/wp-content...ngdogsdefinitiveedition-header01-1080x625.jpg

If you pre-order now...

sleeping_dogs_ps4_xbox_one.0.jpg


In addition to the upgraded visuals, United Front has also upgraded and improved the game's audio ambiance, refined and tuned the gameplay, and is supposed to run at a full 1080p. More details to come at Gamescom(?)...

And just because...

 
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Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Le Saboteur said:
If you haven't played it yet, I recommend picking it up for the PS4 or X-Box One. Sure, it'll set you back a full $60 but you'll get every piece of DLC that United Front developed.
Interestingly, for once I actually feel this point a detriment, at least towards those who already have acquired the base game.

While I'm usually a sucker for all additional content when it comes to extra content for games that hit my buttons (I'm especially looking at you, BioWare), the bits provided for Sleeping Dogs didn't quite do it for me. While some were fun, they didn't really add to the main game. Some outfits did provide fun bonuses, but I just couldn't take the game's narrative seriously watching Wei show up in a triad meeting dressed in some gaudy piece of eastern cinema cosplay. And when some actual additional story content was provided, like the Year of the Dragon, the production values were noticeably lower compared to the main game.

Finn said:
Black Flag... I'll give my lasting impression once I'm done, but yeah, it's at the very least the second best entry to the series. I'll wait 'til the credits until I say whether it's actually better than Brotherhood. But given how suspicious I was of its foundations and the current series development cycle in general, I'll have to grudgingly tip my hat to Ubi for actually pulling it off.
Looks like I somehow just walked out of this thread without giving my final 2c to the Black Flag, despite wrapping it up months ago.

Le Sab said just above that he got bored with the game... and yeah, gotta agree. The initial impression I had didn't last 'til the end either. It just fell to the same detrimental sin that seems to plague every other Ubi free-roam title - the sandbox they built failed to offer enough variety and the side activities soon turned recursive. While no place was an exact carbon copy of another, the things one ended up doing just were.

Ironically, many said after playing AC III that they could totally get behind a game built around its sailing element. Well, yeah... didn't do it for me. The first time I tried to take on a frigate with a badly under-equipped Jackdaw was exhilirating, but once you got the jist of it, the same set of tactics worked with every ship type. By the end I could sail circles around three man'o'wars, rip 'em all to shreds and hardly break a sweat. No variety. And far as the land activities go, they've been pretty much unchanged since AC II. That stuff still hits it pinnacle in Brotherhood and hasn't been able to break any ground since.

Interestingly, I see that AC Brotherhood and Sleeping Dogs work for the very same reasons. The size of the game world is exactly right to pepper the map with a variety of activities without them turning repetitive. Sure, big game worlds make for nice marketing points, but it's extremely hard to fill a map as big as Black Flag with enough variety - which means you have about two ways to go - either you can leave the worldspace big and empty - or litter it with same two or three minigames that repeat ad infinitum.

Up to date, seemingly only Rockstar really knows how to hit that sweet spot between map size and meaningful activities. The reason United Front was able to challenge was due to them realizing that sometimes less is more. Their Hong Kong is not the size of Liberty City or Los Santos and its surrounding countryside, but in regards to the amount of content they created, it just helps hold the game together.

It will be interesting to see how Ubi has managed to handle this aspect with Watch_Dogs, once I manage pick it up cheap from somewhere. What I've read of the game though, it does not look promising.

---

And what have I've been playing since my last visit to this thread? Mostly Mass Effect, starting all the way from the first game. Currently about halfway through ME2. I played through ME3 in vanilla state two years ago when it came out two years ago with the intention to revisit once all that DLC I spoke about earlier is out.

The original plan was to simply replay part three. But I ended up going with the whole trilogy, because I figured I might as well bring some variety to it and create a whole new worldstate. When ME3 first came out, it received a ton of flak due to its ending - and while it could have been better, yes, I couldn't bring myself to hate it either. Like the case was with certain fourth installment to a popular movie series, I felt that most of the response was yet another noisy case of severe fan dumb. Because, the ending to the trilogy was not the last 15 minutes of it, but the entire game. And while it does send one down the same general path no matter what choices one made over the previous two installments, many sights by it do truly change.
 

The Drifter

New member
I've been slogging through Diablo III on the PS4 as of late. It's been a fun slog, and I'm enjoying it highly. This is my first foray into the Diablo series. I'll do a review once I finish the game.
 

S. Dakota Jones

New member
I bought the ME trilogy because I had never played it before a year ago. So far I have finished the first two each once and have 2nd games going on in each on either hardcore or insanity(partially for the achievement and also for different decisions) but have only played partway through ME3. I don't know why I haven't finished it yet but I will probably finish my second playthrough of ME2 before I do go on lol.

I have also been playing Watchdogs but one of the minigames where you clear out the city of the shadow...people or whatever they were...found some parts of it really frustrating but finished it and was pretty drained afterwards. Haven't touched it since.
 

S. Dakota Jones

New member
Really looking forward to Far Cry 4. I I have and love Far Cry 3 and still play it even after beating it a couple times over. The Quad/ATV is still my favorite mode of traveling around the island.


Recently, I've been playing Alien: Isolation. Anyone playing that? I ahve it hooked up to my surround sound and have the music turned almost all the way down(necessarily so), and it makes the atmosphere an entirely different experience. I've only run into the Alien once and spent an hour trapped in a room waiting for certain doom from it coming through the vents after me but it never did and I was able to slip away. Tension is the name of the game even before the Alien shows up.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
S. Dakota Jones said:
Really looking forward to Far Cry 4. I I have and love Far Cry 3 and still play it even after beating it a couple times over. The Quad/ATV is still my favorite mode of traveling around the island.

"I called for executioners so that, while dying, I could bite the butts of their rifles. I called for plagues to choke me with sand, with blood. Bad luck was my god. I stretched out in the muck. I dried myself in the air of crime. And I played tricks on insanity."

- Rimbaud

I liked Far Cry 3. I had a lot of fun with it, but at the end of the day it wasn't a game I could justify hanging onto. While I found it be mechanically sound -- and it provided a lot of different avenues -- it all felt very mechanical, and a lot of design elements really, really turned me off.

To start: The Economy

Ubisoft has yet to successfully implement an economy in any of their games that I've played. Black Flag is the worst offender by far, but Far Cry's served virtually no purpose. Sure, you could buy various firearms and propulsion devices, but the game would magically gift those same weapons to you if you "discovered" and "liberated" the various radio towers scattered about the islands. If I remember correctly, you could get every gun in the game after you found about half of the towers. That's designing at cross purposes. Especially because money served no purpose after you were sufficiently armed.

Hunting

I found the hunting in Red Dead Redemption to be a superb addition, one that really added to the flavor of the game. Unfortunately, Rockstar didn't take it as far as they could, but I didn't hate it either. Ubisoft, on the other hand, really, really screwed the pooch when it came to hunting in Far Cry 3. Kill two bull sharks to make a wallet?! And then kill two tigers to make a sling to hold more flamethrower fuel?! That's, in a word, retarded. It screams of "game mechanics" and of something extra to do... well, just because.

All of that would have been forgivable if the local fauna behaved in a semi-realistic manner, but, of course, they don't. Ubisoft went with the idea that every species is a thrill-killer that will attack you on sight because animals.

Story

The ad campaign talked up the concept of "insanity" ad nauseum, and I was admittedly intrigued. It's almost as if Far Cry aspired to be the 21st Century equivalent of Heart of Darkness. But concept and reality are two different things, and Ubisoft doesn't/didn't have the temerity to take the player down that path because of its financial considerations. Where Conrad's classic takes you right into the heart of Kurtz's madness, Far Cry skirts the periphery of the idea and gussies it up with obvious quotes from Alice in Wonderland.

There was a lot of personality on display in the rogues gallery that inhabited the Rook Islands, but that personality was all surface. What should have been a slow, steady descent into madness and either embracing or escaping from it* fell wildly short once your business with Vaas was concluded. Hoyt was set up to an excellent villain, but like so many other things felt like an add-on in order to extend the playtime beyond the game's natural conclusion.


* - This is a significant reason why both endings felt out of place and flat.

That said, I am looking forward to Far Cry 4. Ubisoft earned a second look, and Nepal has always been a fascinating location. I do wish that so much of it didn't look like it was imported from part three, but enough updates have been made to pique my interest, namely elephants. Pagan Min looks to be another top-notch villain too, but you won't be able to join up with him either. More on that potential problem once the game has actually been played, though.


 

S. Dakota Jones

New member
Yes, the economy was broken, and that limit of carrying $10,000 was stupid. I agree with your statement on the weapons purchasing/unlocking is correct, as well as the part about hunting exotic animals just to upgrade your equipment.

I did love the campaign but that ending wasn't very good either way you went.

MP was pretty fun but some of those missions were too long and it was hard to try and pick specific missions to get the achievement. A lot of times you had to do the entire story to get to do those missions....IF you didn't lose your lobby.
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
2014 has been kind to SCEA and the PlayStation 4. Sony’s latest console has been wildly successful with nearly 14-million units sold through to end-users, but their plan to hit the ground running and grind Microsoft into obsolescence hit with some snags. Major games (The Order: 1886) were delayed to hopefully improve upon them, and when they were eventually released (Drive Club) didn’t get the critical acclaim they wanted and suffered, like Drive Club, from crippling flaws. In Drive Club’s case the entire online social aspect of the game was broken negating almost the entire reason behind the title.

In order to recapture some of the mindshare they’ve lost over the year, Sony is holding a PlayStation Experience this weekend (December 6th & 7th) in Vegas. By all accounts it’s going to something to remember. Several developers across the PlayStation family (& friends) teased the announcement of something massive. A ‘megaton’ as the cool kids call it. An insider over at GAF upped the ante by stating that he was aware of not only the original announcement, but three other megatons. One of which might be considered a ‘gigaton’. Not only were “insiders” stirring the pot, but a member of senior management (that would be Adam Boyes) was fueling that Hype Train. For senior management to be involved something must be really different about this event…

The 90-minute keynote kicks off this Saturday @ 1000 PST. Stay tuned for details! In the meantime, got a favorite studio and/or game? Well, these are the studios confirmed to be in attendance thus far.




  • Capcom
  • Media Molecule
  • Square-Enix
  • Rockstar Games
  • Naughty Dog
  • Ready at Dawn
  • Sony San Diego Studio
  • WB Games
  • Activision
  • Double Fine
  • Sony Santa Monica Studio
  • Guerrilla Games
  • Disney
  • Electronic Arts

    And many more! Check the confirmed list over here.

The Double Fine appearance should be particularly appealing to readers of this thread. Disney & Sony worked out a deal that is bringing the classic point n' click adventure Grim Fandango to the PS4!

We're also expected to get a new look at From Software's Bloodborne! Which if you haven't already heard about it looks spectacular.


Ready at Dawn is also expected to have a new look at The Order: 1886 and have confirmed a new, more extensive playable demo that is supposed to be pretty keen for those already in the know.


Forth, PlayStation!

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James-Bean

New member
What videogames give you guys & girls slightly negative-associations?

I'm just curious!

What video-games give you guys & girls slightly negative-associations? As in Videogames that don't give you associations of happier-times in your life. Because you played it during a time you were not as happy?
 

James-Bean

New member
Agent Crab said:
I am sure some of us play video games. I am not sure if there was a thread about this.. so...

Whatcha been playin' as of late? It can be console, PC or whatever.

I been playing Final Fantasy IV on the DS, as well for the SNES for a run on Youtube.


We'll I"ve been mostly playing Doom 3 on my PC lately! It's this fan-made remake map of of an old-school Doom Shores Of Hell map I just love called Deimos Lab. But I've also been playing a little bit of Doom 3 BFG Edition!
 

Le Saboteur

Active member
Finn said:
And when some actual additional story content was provided, like the Year of the Snake, the production values were noticeably lower compared to the main game.

Fixed. You're either two years too late or ten years too early for the Year of the Dragon. The next one will be in 2024.

I had Sleeping Dogs paid off and went in to pick it up, but the announcement of the hella horrible free-to-play Triad Wars proved to be too much and I canceled it. Sixty bucks was too much to gift Square-Enix when I already have the original release, and with no sequel on the horizon.

Saw it for thirty bucks the other day. I may pull the trigger on it at that price in order to experience the add-on story components. Nightmare in North Point looked like a lot of fun.

Went and saw this again instead...



You won't be disappointed.

I currently have Diablo III, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments, & Far Cry 4 in rotation, but took a couple of days to work on my PS3 backlog. I started the Ratchet & Clank Collection finally, and finally thwarted the Red Skull's plans in Captain America: Super Soldier*.

* - If you want an exceptionally easy platinum trophy this is it. They practically give it to you just for completing the game.


Super Soldier takes place during that montage from The First Avenger after Cap springs Bucky and the Howling Commandos from the Red Skull's clutches. So while not quite a movie tie-in, it's close enough for government work.

At its core Super Soldier mixes platforming and brawling much like the lauded Arkham series, but without the polish and flair of Rocksteady's outings. So while Cap can do all of those things in the trailer, they're neither as fluid or functional as they should be. So what should be a rather deep combat system is hindered by the fact that our titular super soldier can't take on more than one enemy at a time. Hurling Cap's mighty shield is fun, but lacks some of the oomph it should have most of the time.

Like the Arkham series as well, Super Soldier features a series of stand alone challenges that focus either on combat or platforming. The platforming segments have some nice variation, but once you've conquered them there's no use going back. Same for the combat section, too. I still fire up Arkham City from time-to-time just to run Robin or Nightwing through their paces, but the flaws present in the combat don't make a a second round enticing.

That said, it's worth a rental.

5.5/10

There are some cool design elements on display. Chris Evans lends his voice and likeness to the game, as do nearly all of the stars from The First Avenger. Most of the Howling Commandos are back, and this is the closest yet - and that you might ever get -- to acknowledging James Montgomery Falsworth as Union Jack.

Madame_hydra.jpg
 

Finn

Moderator
Staff member
Le Saboteur said:
Fixed. You're either two years too late or ten years too early for the Year of the Dragon. The next one will be in 2024.
Eh. Kinda tells in itself how much I cared about that particular DLC.

As for myself, still exploring the sights and sounds of the Mass Effect trilogy. Every time I pick up an RPG, the very same thing happens. Start one late spring, entering into the slow summer release season. "Alright, even if this one's got plenty of stuff to see, should be done with it in a two to three months, tops". The plan is to clear it out of the system, in order to have time for all the new titles come the fall.

Later... check the calendar, find that better part of a year has passed and you're still not quite at the end. Feel a pang of guilt when you hear the supports creaking under the backlog.

Almost let out a sigh of relief when they postponed the Witcher 3 to late May.
 

IndyBuff

Well-known member
I completed Alien: Isolation (on hard difficulty, no less) and it's an amazing, scary, and merciless experience. I loved every minute of it and highly recommend it to fans of the franchise or just survival-horror fans in general. It took a long time but someone FINALLY gave us a true Alien experience.:)
 

jsarino

New member
Nothing console-wise lately because I want to transition from PS3 to PS4 at some point this year. But, for nostalgia's sake, I did download a LucasArts classic on both my MacBook and my Android devices...Knights of the Old Republic
KotOR_Cover.png
 
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