What are you playing? [SPOILER TAGS PLEASE]

Started by Sabby, May 31, 2009, 12:45:35 PM

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Wolfy

Quote from: Sabby on June 10, 2012, 12:40:12 PM
Got the Sega Megadrive Ultimate Collection. Ya know... to test out my new HD flat screen >.> Mmm, look at all them bits. All 16 of them. Best money I ever spent.

Also got a few others, Inversion, Burnout Paradise, Midnight Club LA, Harley Quinn's Revenge, and King Kong.

Tell me how Inversion is, Sabbers.

Sabby

What I've come to expect from third person shooters lately, a functional game that thinks including one gimmick excuses the rest being a generic GoW clone.

Inkidu

I'm really not liking the lack of a fast-travel system in Dragon's Dogma. The third time I tried to limp back to town it got dull. The game also has no problem throwing totally new enemies in totally familiar places. Thinking about going and doing an assassin. I just wanted to get back to town! D:
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Sabby

Buy Ferrystones. There's a guy in Gran Soren, in a manor near the castle, who will sell a few now and then, 10 grand each. Not sure of the amount he'll sell and when it restocks, but I usually pick up 3 or 4.

Hemingway

I want to like Dragon's Dogma, but I just ... can't.

It does a few things really well. Mainly fights against big monsters. Which is why I don't understand why that's as small a part of the game as it is, or why they didn't try to make those even more interesting. But, no. Instead, most of the time you're fighting goblins and other creatures that couldn't even begin to challenge you, and don't reward you in any way either.

In so many other ways, it's just another mediocre game. It has cardboard cutouts for characters and the story is basically a leaner version of Skyrim ( which is a real feat, considering how lacking the story in Skyrim was ). The gameplay is decent, but it's nothing special. It doesn't help that I'm a warrior, which limits my number of attacks to half of what others get, and most of those I don't need anyway.

It's a game that could be fun, but it just doesn't want to be that way. It doesn't want to be a game about hunting monsters, gathering stuff and making new weapons so you can hunt bigger monsters. Even though that would be a far more interesting game than this. And I genuinely believe that's the problem the game has. It tries to be something it's not, while not making the most of the parts that actually make it good. Which is why I still hope for a sequel, one that does away with all the goblins and wolves and just gives you a sword, points at a dragon and says THAT'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KILL.

Inkidu

Quote from: Sabby on June 11, 2012, 02:01:25 PM
Buy Ferrystones. There's a guy in Gran Soren, in a manor near the castle, who will sell a few now and then, 10 grand each. Not sure of the amount he'll sell and when it restocks, but I usually pick up 3 or 4.
I'm kind of broke, I just got to the capital and promptly spent every cent I had on new gear. Still, it's good to know they have something.

I got Need for Speed: The Run in my rentals today. Not great, but good. Fast cars, neat premise, a little disjointed for the premise, but okay.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.


Inkidu

Beat Need for Speed: The Run. Frustrating, mediocre, not really worth it. God bless rental services.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

TyKing

Just finished Max Payne 3 for the second time. Great game. One thing that kind of bugged me about it was all the clip/loading scenes where I got an earful of Payne's philosophy on life. Towards the end I was like: 'I don't fucking care! I want to play the game!' But other than that I loved it, I took full advantage of BulletTime and even stopped to smell the roses, or in Max's case, play the piano.

I played some of the multiplayer and have to admit I'm terrible at it but still had great fun.


Sabby

Wolfy, it's Japan. That's my comment. Show me something strange and Denmarkish :P

StarForge - First Playable Release

Hemingway

I finally caved and bought Diablo 3. It's entirely my own fault. I've been wanting to play it for a while, but wanted to try the trial version first. Waiting for that to become available, I decided to play some Torchlight. Which was my mistake. It just made me want to play Diablo 3 even more. Turns out summer gets really boring really fast when you have nothing but time on your hands.

Anyway, it's time for first impressions. I'm going to keep this short.

Basically, this is a game that feels like a step back in almost every way. If you'd lined up the features of Diablo 3 ( like the limited character development and the way skills work ) and the same of Diablo 2, and then asked me which one was the sequel based on that alone, I would've said Diablo 2.

The gameplay feels significantly slower than the previous titles. The controls are occasionally sluggish. The story I have no idea about because the in-game cinematics are apparently streamed and they stutter so much that I can't watch them. I suspect it doesn't matter. I just make up my own story instead, which is probably just as well. The voice acting is pathetic. The classes feel very limited and limiting. You're far more restricted in terms of weapons and roles than in Diablo 2. It's a lazy game overall, as all other Blizzard titles. My go-to gaming site acknowledged this, but said that what they have is at least perfectly executed. I ... beg to differ.

Now, that's very harsh, but I stand by it. This game doesn't live up to the hype ( to absolutely nobody's surprise ) at all. It's still a decent way to kill some time, looting monsters is still fun despite everything, but to give this game a perfect score as so many have done is ... well, I think we've already established that I think critics are full of shit, and this just further cements that. This is not a perfect game. This is not even a very good game. It's a decent game that I'll probably play through once which will probably take me like 10 hours, then I'll forget about it for a while, and replay it in a year.

Inkidu

At this point I just want the new XCOM game. :(
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Hemingway

Huh. I checked to see if there are actually any games I want coming any time soon, and ... Civ 5 expansion aside, there aren't really any. I wasn't even aware of how bad it was!

I guess I was getting Diablo 3 sooner or later no matter what.

DajaOfTheNight

Replaying Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition for the 10th time. I love Zev.

Geeklet

Eh, I'm loving Diablo 3, personally. Yes, it is different in many ways that Diablo 2. There are a few things I like, and a few things I don't. But overall, I am still enjoying myself. As far as the restrictions on weapons? Um, aside for a set of weapons specific to each class, weapons can be used by anyone. Right now, my wizard is wielding a sword. And while part of me does miss being able to hotkey up to 12 skills, having the limited number is actually a bit of a strategy in itself, trying to figure out the right set for what you want. And some of the runes for the skills can drastically alter the way it functions. So while it may seem limiting at first, there is just as much customization as there was in D2, in my opinion.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go toss some lightning around at some undead.

Hemingway

I think the bottom line is that Diablo 3 doesn't ( and perhaps isn't meant to ) appeal to the same audience as Diablo and Diablo 2. There's just so much I would've liked to be different about Diablo 3, ranging from vital to trivial.

One major flaw is that the game seems to think it has an actual story to tell. The previous games were fairly thin on story, except what you got through listening to people and reading tomes. Diablo was basically about venturing deeper and deeper into the cathedral, uncovering parts of the story as you went along. Diablo 2 was slightly more story-based, but it's not like it's heavy on plot. It had what I, looking back, think was a very nice setup of giving you only 6 quests of varying length per act, and that was that. Diablo 3 plays more like a chain of quests in WoW, and it's about as interesting. I really think that Blizzard at some point after finishing Warcraft 3 basically forgot how to tell a story, or what made a story good. Don't get me wrong, the problem isn't that Diablo 3's story is bad. The problem is that the game seems to think it isn't, so the endless sequence of little quests ends up, at least for me, being a distraction from what should've been good about the game.

The fact is that Diablo 3's combat isn't all that interesting either, though. Like I've mentioned, it's slower than Diablo 2 in practically every way. Enemies are slower, you can take more damage, you're not fighting that many enemies at a time ( well, not as far as I've gotten, which isn't all that far ... but still far enough to know that Act 1 of Diablo 3 is far slower than act 1 of Diablo 2. But I digress... ), and so on.

Basically - and this is what it boils down to - I can think of a lot of ways in which Diablo 2 was better, but not a single one in which Diablo 3 is better. I mean, take the skill system, for instance? Well, the lack of customization in attributes is a step back, if you ask me. It's certainly not an improvement. The same with the way your skills work. It's an interesting system, and it's not bad ... but you can't call it an improvement. Crafting? It's interesting, sure, but ... it was never really missing from the previous games, and it's sort of antithetical to the main attraction of Diablo. Which is loot.

Now, I'm not some sort of Diablo 2 purist who thinks it's the best game ever. But then again, Diablo and Diablo 2 are games I've spent a lot of time with, and I think I could rightly be called a fan.

Anyway, them's just my thoughts. I expect I'll write something more in-depth and structured later on. Above all, I just want to get across the point that this game has gotten several perfect reviews. It is not a perfect game. It's not even in the same league as perfect. It's a game that, had it been made by anyone but Blizzard and had a different name, it would've been maimed by the critics. There is absolutely no way anyone would've given it a perfect score if it hadn't been Diablo 3 by Blizzard. I'd stake my life on it. Or something.

Inkidu

Well, there is AC III and RE6. I'll like them. Perhaps Dead Space 3, though... even I have my trepidations about it going... co-op. Come on people. I don't mind if you action up the horror. I get that. I'm not into the artsy-craftsy "the whole town is out to twist your psyche" thing. Guess what? My psyche and said fictional town aren't together. However, even I know that it's a fine line when you bring other people along. It's doable, but tricky, especially with games.

Yeah, I need jump scares. Atmosphere is nice and all, but I watch horror movies to see and sympathize with other people, not think the horror is happening to me. Plus, if the whole town is the evil and it's really unbeatable and omnipresent where's the catharsis? Horror is about the catharsis. Dead Space 1 and 2 got that. Horror without the catharsis is pointless. D:<

It's why they're all sitting on the dock at the end of The Shining! It's why the Saw movies suck!
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Hemingway

#5842
I actually just finished Dead Space 2 the other day. I like how the ending mirrored the ending of the first game. I'm not sure I'd agree that Dead Space uses jump scares, if that's what you're suggesting, though. Or at least it doesn't do it in an unsophisticated way where you eventually get used to it. More often than not in that game, at least for me, the fear was in suspecting that something was going to jump out at me, then having to wait, and wait, and wait, until eventually nothing happened and it'd all just been in my head.

Anyway, anyway. There are good games coming. But very few in June, July and August. Which, you know, I understand why. It's just that until mid August I have practically nothing to do, so having some solid games to play would've been nice.

Torchlight 2 is supposed to be released this summer, though. MechWarrior Online doesn't have an official date yet, but speculation says some time this summer. There's the Civ 5 expansion, of course, which should be good. But aside from those...

Well, maybe that'll be enough.

Edit: I've managed to figure out what it is I don't like about Diablo 3's class system. It's quite simple, really.

It's not that there aren't enough classes, it's that each class locks you into a very specific mode of gameplay. In Diablo 2, there were several ways to play most classes. I'm not just talking about you could be DPS or a tank as a barbarian, or you could either summon armies of skeletons or deal direct damage as a necromancer. I mean you could even be a ranged barbarian, if you wanted. The Amazon was probably the most flexible, in that you could be ranged, melee, or both ( bows, spears, javelins, respectively ).

In Diablo 3, only Demon Hunters can use bows and crossbows - and most of their abilities are more or less exclusive to ranged weapons ( including all their primary attacks ). It's just much more limited than Diablo 2. And more limited equals less fun. Even had a barbarian with a bow been considerably weaker than a melee one, it would've been fun to be able to experiment. It's kind of telling, I suppose, that there's no option to keep two sets of weapons at the same time and switch by hitting W.

Inkidu

Meh, I just quit playing Diablo when I realized that I wasn't playing it because it was fun, I was playing it because it was conditioning me to play it. I took a look at Blizzard games and realized that these people knew how to create the mother of all Skinner Boxes. I play games because I find them fun, not because I have to have the next pair of marginally better pants. :|

Also, beat Arkham City 100%! And I also got totally ROFLstomped by the computer in CiV. I hate you Hiawatha! D:
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Sabby

Guys, if you ever get bored with a slow release period... just Google underrated games. It lead me to Void.

What a beautiful little gem of a game. Really, I've never played anything like this. From what I can gather, your a Soul that has passed on, so you're dead. You've entered this strange symbolic world, all warped geographical representations of reality, almost like a dream made from what you remember from life. Here, you're Soul will only exist as long as it has Colour, but the afterlife kind of sucks... it's been drained to a moody grey. Everything is just cloudy, dark, lifeless and dull.

You need to explore and collect what little bits of Colour you can, grow them in your body, put them into the world and help it live again.

Hemingway

#5845
I think I've identified the five main reasons that, for me, Diablo 3 feels like a step back from Diablo 2.

Slow-paced gameplay: I've mentioned this already, but the game is just slower than Diablo 2. It's evident in things like the fact you rarely meet more than ten or so enemies at the same time, even with things like the Fallen ( the little demon guys you'd encounter hordes of in Diablo 2 ). There are also lots of enemies you have to wait for. Like skeletons emerging from the ground, or demons being summoned, things like that. You have to wait before you can even hit them, and the wait usually takes about as long as the killing.

Potions are another really important factor here. Because potions are on a 30 second cooldown, and most of your healing comes from globules dropped by monsters on the ground, you quite frequently end up having to run away from strong monsters while waiting for your potion cooldown to finish.

Too much story: I usually complain about games having too little story, but Diablo 3 gets it wrong. Where Diablo and Diablo 2 left most of the story to tomes scattered around and dialogue before and after quests, Diablo 3 injects as many cutscenes and poorly voiced, blandly written conversation as it can between quests that are usually way shorter than in previous titles. The worst part is that someone was paid to write this story, and someone else was paid to record the voices. And they're bad. Hilariously bad.

Exploration and immersion: Of which there is none. I just figured out that the map seems to reset if you leave the game. That is, if you've explored an area and then return later, you'll have to explore it over again. That makes it feel basically like an arcade game to me. Not to mention the world is far less open than in Diablo 2. It has more in common with the narrow environments of Diablo than the open ones of Diablo 2, but without the randomness ( supposedly there is some randomization, but ... I can't seem to find it ) to make up for it. It has more in common with Titan Quest than Diablo in that regard.

Also, this may seem like a minor thing, but it really annoys me that you can't have a map overlay up while exploring. Instead you get a minimap in the corner that you can't adjust in any way ( I would've liked to remove it entirely ) and an overlay that disables movement and darkens the screen. Apparently this was a deliberate move to get people focused on the action, but personally I just find it distracting in that I have to stop to see where I'm going, and it very definitely feels like a less advanced version of what they had in Diablo and Diablo 2.

Achievements and popups for killing x number of creatures in y amount of time is another thing. A product of the COD era of gaming, I guess.

Loot: Why is there crafting in a game that's essentially driven by the desire for loot? Really, I don't get it. And why do items come pre-identified ( except in the case of golden unique items )? I mean, call me simple-minded, but finding an item and identifying it to see if it's any good is a huge part of what makes Diablo exciting. Especially when it's a golden or green item. But Diablo 3 isn't like that. Instead, the best items you get for the most part from crafting them yourself, which is just ... missing the point entirely, really.

Classes and character customization: I got into the limitations of the classes in my previous post, so I won't repeat that. I will say that it also sucks that there's no spending of attributes and skill points, though. The skill system itself works, although again it feels like a more primitive version of Diablo 2 and not a more advanced one. The main thing is that you can't build your character as you want him or her. Leveling up just isn't as much fun when you can't build your character as you want. You don't get to tailor attributes and skills to your own preferences. Every few levels you're given a new skill, and a lot of these are essentially useless compared to others, and then sometimes you get runes and passive abilities which you basically have to pick based on your role. It just lacks flexibility.

***

It's not all bad, of course. The main good thing about the game is that I get to rant about it, which fills me with much joy. Aside from that, I can't think of a single way in which it's better than Diablo 2. Now, does anyone know where I can get a digital copy of Diablo 2 and Lord of Destruction? That'd be great.

While I wait for Torchlight 2.

I actually thought of firing up Torchlight earlier - while playing Diablo 3. Man, this game is ... It's a decent way of killing time that you'd otherwise spend reading TVTropes or Wikipedia. Or the local newspaper.

***

Edit: Until now, I avoided talking about the bugs and problems Diablo 3 suffers from. I'll mention something briefly now. As you read it, try to imagine this following part being spoken in a barely restrained manner, through clenched teeth: Blizzard have really created something revolutionary here. Never before have I experienced anything like this. You have not lived until you've experienced lag and server maintenance in a single-player game. It is a sublime experience.

Inkidu

You know they actually had D3 basically complete like six years ago which would not have been an unreasonable time frame off of Lord of Destruction, but someone in Blizzard proper didn't care for it and scrapped it. It was about the time they shut down Blizzard North. So, does the "Blizzard releases it when it's done" defense work when there are a lot of people like Hemingway who find it a step backward? They WoW-afied their own game... whatever I washed my hands of Blizzard a long time ago.

I would like this game to be a loss for them, something that would take them down a peg or two, but that's probably not going to happen.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Geeklet

As much as I may love Diablo 3, I also loved Diablo 2, and I can definitely see the difference. I will admit that some of Hemingway's points had merit. Some of them I disagreed with. And others were complaints on things that 2 & 3 had similar, not different.

Hemingway

Ahh, Blizzard North... *longing sigh.*

I'm pretty sure Blizzard are laughing all the way to the bank, but I want to think that there's something like change coming. In the past year, big developers have been at the center of monumental screw-ups. I'm talking of course about this, and the ME3 ending and DLC debacle, and probably some less notable examples too. And while these have all sold well, and been well received by critics, the players have been merciless. I don't think they can keep doing what they're doing with their games ( producing crap, essentially ) and dismissing people who don't like them by talking about how many people do like them. Sooner or later their laziness is going to cost them. Probably some other company will produce something actually good and innovative, and that'll be the next big thing. Unless these big developers make a change.

So I hope, anyway. Because these developers ( I'm thinking specifically about Blizzard, Bethesda, Bioware, probably others I can't remember off the top of my head ) have created some of my favorite games, but lately they've been underwhelming.

As for the role of critics in all this, well ... I stopped listening to critics around the time Red Dead Redemption came out. That one really opened my eyes. I no longer trust them. And I hope everyone else stops listening, too. And then I hope gamers all over the world band together and drive them out of town with pitchforks and torches.

Tumult

I use to play WoW but then I took a panda to the knee.  ::)

Played for four years but hasn't played seriously for over a year. Just got tired of it. Though I have enjoyed my time away from World of Warcrack, given I've been able to put my time back into other things I love and not treat them like a job.

As for what Hemingway mentioned, agree with the points made. I've been so entirely disappointed with how many major game developers have been doing things, especially when it came to crushing one of my favorite games - Mass Effect. I was a fan through all three up until the last twenty minutes of the third one. Story suicide.