JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
catching up on the last page and tears of relief streaming down my face as I learn that I am not the only person who actually likes FFXIII
+5
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
also gnome's point about how the mobile space is largely ignored by mainstream gaming outlets reminds me of a longtime gripe I've had with how MMOs were kind of ghettoized, to (I think) their detriment and near-extinction
like, new MMOs would get coverage in the gaming press, but as soon as a game launched it became the province of a couple of specialty sites for people very deep in the weeds. and as a result of that I feel like the loudest voices - the front pages of your, idk, Gamespots and IGNs and whatever else was around in 2009 - weren't holding devs accountable for how their games developed (or didn't)
we had ten years (!) there where every new MMO launch had the pitch, essentially, of WoW + [thing]. "We're like World of Warcraft, but with adventure game puzzles that require real life research!" "We're like WoW, but with Bioware-style choices!" "We're like WoW but uh in the future? I think? I've been to space"
Everyone was looking at the big guy instead of at each other so each game would have one or two innovations that would have really helped the field, but that only ever existed in that one game because nobody was paying attention to anything but fucking warcraft. City of Heroes had the global ID system so you could see if your friends were online (even if they were playing different characters, or on different servers!) in 2004 yet there are games still running right now that don't have that or something similar.
also gnome's point about how the mobile space is largely ignored by mainstream gaming outlets reminds me of a longtime gripe I've had with how MMOs were kind of ghettoized, to (I think) their detriment and near-extinction
like, new MMOs would get coverage in the gaming press, but as soon as a game launched it became the province of a couple of specialty sites for people very deep in the weeds. and as a result of that I feel like the loudest voices - the front pages of your, idk, Gamespots and IGNs and whatever else was around in 2009 - weren't holding devs accountable for how their games developed (or didn't)
we had ten years (!) there where every new MMO launch had the pitch, essentially, of WoW + [thing]. "We're like World of Warcraft, but with adventure game puzzles that require real life research!" "We're like WoW, but with Bioware-style choices!" "We're like WoW but uh in the future? I think? I've been to space"
Everyone was looking at the big guy instead of at each other so each game would have one or two innovations that would have really helped the field, but that only ever existed in that one game because nobody was paying attention to anything but fucking warcraft. City of Heroes had the global ID system so you could see if your friends were online (even if they were playing different characters, or on different servers!) in 2004 yet there are games still running right now that don't have that or something similar.
The (really very good) Noclip documentary about Final Fantasy XIV tackles that head on. Part of that game's (wildly successful!) rebuild was leadership going, "Wait, has anybody here actually PLAYED any MMOs?" and then making everybody go play some friggin' MMOs
Which seems really obvious, but I'm just a small town pizza lawyer, what do I know
Another issue with Gotham knights gear and coop system is that’s what’s causing the feeling of floaty combat. Because behind the scenes the game is calculating damage or checking for “connection” between the players and the npcs, it limits the kind of animations and physics effects that can be used when connecting hits. This kind of thing can be hidden or negated in shooters like borderlands and destiny, but with animation heavy connecting moves like avengers it always looks janky and feels naff
Even when playing solo because of the nature of the game damage calculations and connection to npcs is calculated in such a way that there’s always a sense of delay or jank
there's a little more i could do in Citizen Sleeper but i've hit credits twice and i think i feel good putting it down
i was really vibing with it for the first like, 2/3rds or so. The last bit didn't really work as well for me though.
All the fun resource juggling was kind of out the window past a certain point; i finished with 999 credits, 6 vials of stabilizer, a separate skill that rendered the stabilizer redundant, +2 in all but one stat, and the ability to reroll dice once per day. Early on it was sort of a tense, stressful thing where i was having to figure out how to stretch my super-thin resources as far as i could, but past a certain point i had enough time and money to do everything i wanted to, which just made going through the motions of doing it get a little old
the stories also started to kinda falter for me near the end. Early on, you're meeting all these different people and getting pulled into all these little side stories that weave sort of this big tapestry of your life on the station. But the bigger questlines almost start to feel like they're trying to promote themselves to A-plot status, i guess presuming that you wouldn't be investing so much in them if you didn't see them that way (which clashes hard with the fact that i had more than enough to do everything and never had to ignore a story to work on a different one). The more serious deadlines were so generous that the idea that i'd even tick the clock to 50% full was kind of laughable. Also some of the plots just kind of petered out? Feng has maybe the longest questline in the game and it's weird that it just sort of stops at a certain point instead of getting into an "ending." Maybe i said the wrong thing at some point or missed a secret trigger that could've kept it going, i dunno.
But like, the first ending I got was the one with the guy and his daughter who couldn't get on the colony ship. And like, yeah, I did spend a lot of time with them, and yeah the writing at the end of that quest was very pretty and got me a little misty-eyed because I'm a sap, but I was still kind of blindsided when it suddenly cut to credits. That did not at all feel like it was a central enough plot to have that much weight assigned to it. Then I played for an hour or two more and met The Gardener, and that felt a bit more like an ending ending because it was the culmination of a plotline i'd been chasing from the beginning and was focused on my character's questions of identity, but even that was kind of undercut by the fact that the last leg of that questline takes a weird, tedious detour into farming mushrooms for like two in-game weeks.
also, don't feel like that ending hit as hard as it could have. i think it's an interesting choice to give you, to keep inhabiting a humanoid body or abandon it and become something weird and new, but i don't feel like they did enough to really sell you on the benefits of being weird and new. i don't wanna just sit in the muhroom miasma for all eternity, tell me why that's fun or cool or interesting beyond just "you won't have to eat anymore." But then on the other side, my connection point back to humanity in that scene was the botanist lady that i had basically just met and frankly did not care all that much about one way or the other. The scene itself I think is really good, but i don't think they laid the groundwork well enough to really sell it.
anyway yeah, overall had a great time with it, but it kinda farted out at the end for me, which is a bummer.
there's a little more i could do in Citizen Sleeper but i've hit credits twice and i think i feel good putting it down
i was really vibing with it for the first like, 2/3rds or so. The last bit didn't really work as well for me though.
All the fun resource juggling was kind of out the window past a certain point; i finished with 999 credits, 6 vials of stabilizer, a separate skill that rendered the stabilizer redundant, +2 in all but one stat, and the ability to reroll dice once per day. Early on it was sort of a tense, stressful thing where i was having to figure out how to stretch my super-thin resources as far as i could, but past a certain point i had enough time and money to do everything i wanted to, which just made going through the motions of doing it get a little old
the stories also started to kinda falter for me near the end. Early on, you're meeting all these different people and getting pulled into all these little side stories that weave sort of this big tapestry of your life on the station. But the bigger questlines almost start to feel like they're trying to promote themselves to A-plot status, i guess presuming that you wouldn't be investing so much in them if you didn't see them that way (which clashes hard with the fact that i had more than enough to do everything and never had to ignore a story to work on a different one). The more serious deadlines were so generous that the idea that i'd even tick the clock to 50% full was kind of laughable. Also some of the plots just kind of petered out? Feng has maybe the longest questline in the game and it's weird that it just sort of stops at a certain point instead of getting into an "ending." Maybe i said the wrong thing at some point or missed a secret trigger that could've kept it going, i dunno.
But like, the first ending I got was the one with the guy and his daughter who couldn't get on the colony ship. And like, yeah, I did spend a lot of time with them, and yeah the writing at the end of that quest was very pretty and got me a little misty-eyed because I'm a sap, but I was still kind of blindsided when it suddenly cut to credits. That did not at all feel like it was a central enough plot to have that much weight assigned to it. Then I played for an hour or two more and met The Gardener, and that felt a bit more like an ending ending because it was the culmination of a plotline i'd been chasing from the beginning and was focused on my character's questions of identity, but even that was kind of undercut by the fact that the last leg of that questline takes a weird, tedious detour into farming mushrooms for like two in-game weeks.
also, don't feel like that ending hit as hard as it could have. i think it's an interesting choice to give you, to keep inhabiting a humanoid body or abandon it and become something weird and new, but i don't feel like they did enough to really sell you on the benefits of being weird and new. i don't wanna just sit in the muhroom miasma for all eternity, tell me why that's fun or cool or interesting beyond just "you won't have to eat anymore." But then on the other side, my connection point back to humanity in that scene was the botanist lady that i had basically just met and frankly did not care all that much about one way or the other. The scene itself I think is really good, but i don't think they laid the groundwork well enough to really sell it.
anyway yeah, overall had a great time with it, but it kinda farted out at the end for me, which is a bummer.
Okay now I can talk about my endings, which coincidentally are your endings, but the order and manner in which I hit them had a transformative effect on both.
So, I managed to luck into having the clocks lined up JUST right for me to finish the Gardener storyline AND the family storyline. I decided to check in on the Gardener first, because I was really curious about that story (and I suspected the family check in would be the end of the game).
As I'm nearing the end of the sequence, I'm offered the choice of staying in my body or leaving it. And I'm thinking about what it would mean, what I would gain, what I would leave behind. I know I want connection and community, but what do I mean when I say that? Do I want to be a part of something that's bigger than me, that looks happy, but that is so far removed from what I know that it is alien to me? Do I want that abstracted, almost heavenly unity? Or do I view community as something realer, harder, an act of defiance against a cruel world?
And then I remembered the family that I was helping find a new life, a new chance, a new hope. If I let go of my worries, I'd be letting go of them. How could I hurt people that had done so much with me, for me, who needed me?
And that I was thinking that way told me which answer I had to pick. I knew it would be hard to go back, but I knew why I would choose to do a hard thing.
And I hit one set of credits, and then the game kept rolling. And I walked over to the spaceport, and I joined my found family, and I read what the journey brought me - difficulty. Pain. Hope. Happiness.
And man alive did I get to crying, it was all so perfect.
But this does answer my question of, "How much of what I saw was planned/pre-ordained to work out that way." And it seems like the answer is, "It's not on rails at all, I just got profoundly lucky"
+2
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
does ffxiii's narrative end with a real conclusion or are ffxiii-2 and ffxiii-3 required to get a full story?
Speaking of restrictions on story, I had a hole in my gaming schedule and Okami HD was 50% off, so I felt like reliving that experience. And man. Everything about is as great as I remember e x c e p t t h a t t h e t e x t s p o o l s o u t i n c r e d i b l y s l o w l y i n c u t s c e n e s w i t h n o w a y t o s p e e d i t u p. Thankfully there's a fast-scroll button for regular conversations, but man. I am a patient guy and this is grating.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
I liked the start of 13 but by the end I was just trudging through to get it done. When it opens up at the back half instead of being excited I just felt insulted, like goddamnit this could’ve been the game the whole time? I don’t even remember the story or much of the characters. I can see what’s to like in it, but just too many factors had me bouncing off it. I played a few hours of the sequels and they felt suitably bonkers but I just wasn’t interested in that world or it’s characters
In terms of my favourite FF of the old school ones it’s a tie between 7 and 8. Only one I’ve never played is 12.
FF7 Remake is so well done it feels like a different category all of its own, its shocking to me how much better it is than every other game in the series. The writing especially but I’m also a massive fan of the combat system and normally I don’t really care about the combat systems in FF games
there's a little more i could do in Citizen Sleeper but i've hit credits twice and i think i feel good putting it down
i was really vibing with it for the first like, 2/3rds or so. The last bit didn't really work as well for me though.
All the fun resource juggling was kind of out the window past a certain point; i finished with 999 credits, 6 vials of stabilizer, a separate skill that rendered the stabilizer redundant, +2 in all but one stat, and the ability to reroll dice once per day. Early on it was sort of a tense, stressful thing where i was having to figure out how to stretch my super-thin resources as far as i could, but past a certain point i had enough time and money to do everything i wanted to, which just made going through the motions of doing it get a little old
the stories also started to kinda falter for me near the end. Early on, you're meeting all these different people and getting pulled into all these little side stories that weave sort of this big tapestry of your life on the station. But the bigger questlines almost start to feel like they're trying to promote themselves to A-plot status, i guess presuming that you wouldn't be investing so much in them if you didn't see them that way (which clashes hard with the fact that i had more than enough to do everything and never had to ignore a story to work on a different one). The more serious deadlines were so generous that the idea that i'd even tick the clock to 50% full was kind of laughable. Also some of the plots just kind of petered out? Feng has maybe the longest questline in the game and it's weird that it just sort of stops at a certain point instead of getting into an "ending." Maybe i said the wrong thing at some point or missed a secret trigger that could've kept it going, i dunno.
But like, the first ending I got was the one with the guy and his daughter who couldn't get on the colony ship. And like, yeah, I did spend a lot of time with them, and yeah the writing at the end of that quest was very pretty and got me a little misty-eyed because I'm a sap, but I was still kind of blindsided when it suddenly cut to credits. That did not at all feel like it was a central enough plot to have that much weight assigned to it. Then I played for an hour or two more and met The Gardener, and that felt a bit more like an ending ending because it was the culmination of a plotline i'd been chasing from the beginning and was focused on my character's questions of identity, but even that was kind of undercut by the fact that the last leg of that questline takes a weird, tedious detour into farming mushrooms for like two in-game weeks.
also, don't feel like that ending hit as hard as it could have. i think it's an interesting choice to give you, to keep inhabiting a humanoid body or abandon it and become something weird and new, but i don't feel like they did enough to really sell you on the benefits of being weird and new. i don't wanna just sit in the muhroom miasma for all eternity, tell me why that's fun or cool or interesting beyond just "you won't have to eat anymore." But then on the other side, my connection point back to humanity in that scene was the botanist lady that i had basically just met and frankly did not care all that much about one way or the other. The scene itself I think is really good, but i don't think they laid the groundwork well enough to really sell it.
anyway yeah, overall had a great time with it, but it kinda farted out at the end for me, which is a bummer.
Okay now I can talk about my endings, which coincidentally are your endings, but the order and manner in which I hit them had a transformative effect on both.
So, I managed to luck into having the clocks lined up JUST right for me to finish the Gardener storyline AND the family storyline. I decided to check in on the Gardener first, because I was really curious about that story (and I suspected the family check in would be the end of the game).
As I'm nearing the end of the sequence, I'm offered the choice of staying in my body or leaving it. And I'm thinking about what it would mean, what I would gain, what I would leave behind. I know I want connection and community, but what do I mean when I say that? Do I want to be a part of something that's bigger than me, that looks happy, but that is so far removed from what I know that it is alien to me? Do I want that abstracted, almost heavenly unity? Or do I view community as something realer, harder, an act of defiance against a cruel world?
And then I remembered the family that I was helping find a new life, a new chance, a new hope. If I let go of my worries, I'd be letting go of them. How could I hurt people that had done so much with me, for me, who needed me?
And that I was thinking that way told me which answer I had to pick. I knew it would be hard to go back, but I knew why I would choose to do a hard thing.
And I hit one set of credits, and then the game kept rolling. And I walked over to the spaceport, and I joined my found family, and I read what the journey brought me - difficulty. Pain. Hope. Happiness.
And man alive did I get to crying, it was all so perfect.
But this does answer my question of, "How much of what I saw was planned/pre-ordained to work out that way." And it seems like the answer is, "It's not on rails at all, I just got profoundly lucky"
I had similar endings.
The tensest part of the game for me was as the ark ship was preparing to launch and I still had Bliss, Yatagan and the Gardner things going and I was trying to finish them all up. Ultimately, I decided that I couldn't go on the ship with them and waved goodbye to Mina while Castor stood beside me, annoyed but understanding.
In the end I had to choose between the Gardner and bopping around space with Bliss, Moritz and Ankhita. Bliss or bliss?
And I decided to free myself of the corporate flesh and grow into something strange and beautiful.
But yeah, the gameplay at the end was meter maintenance with inevitable progress locked behind ticking clocks. It kind of reminded of the engaging desperation to nuisance curve of Survival Kids for the Gameboy.
there's a little more i could do in Citizen Sleeper but i've hit credits twice and i think i feel good putting it down
i was really vibing with it for the first like, 2/3rds or so. The last bit didn't really work as well for me though.
All the fun resource juggling was kind of out the window past a certain point; i finished with 999 credits, 6 vials of stabilizer, a separate skill that rendered the stabilizer redundant, +2 in all but one stat, and the ability to reroll dice once per day. Early on it was sort of a tense, stressful thing where i was having to figure out how to stretch my super-thin resources as far as i could, but past a certain point i had enough time and money to do everything i wanted to, which just made going through the motions of doing it get a little old
the stories also started to kinda falter for me near the end. Early on, you're meeting all these different people and getting pulled into all these little side stories that weave sort of this big tapestry of your life on the station. But the bigger questlines almost start to feel like they're trying to promote themselves to A-plot status, i guess presuming that you wouldn't be investing so much in them if you didn't see them that way (which clashes hard with the fact that i had more than enough to do everything and never had to ignore a story to work on a different one). The more serious deadlines were so generous that the idea that i'd even tick the clock to 50% full was kind of laughable. Also some of the plots just kind of petered out? Feng has maybe the longest questline in the game and it's weird that it just sort of stops at a certain point instead of getting into an "ending." Maybe i said the wrong thing at some point or missed a secret trigger that could've kept it going, i dunno.
But like, the first ending I got was the one with the guy and his daughter who couldn't get on the colony ship. And like, yeah, I did spend a lot of time with them, and yeah the writing at the end of that quest was very pretty and got me a little misty-eyed because I'm a sap, but I was still kind of blindsided when it suddenly cut to credits. That did not at all feel like it was a central enough plot to have that much weight assigned to it. Then I played for an hour or two more and met The Gardener, and that felt a bit more like an ending ending because it was the culmination of a plotline i'd been chasing from the beginning and was focused on my character's questions of identity, but even that was kind of undercut by the fact that the last leg of that questline takes a weird, tedious detour into farming mushrooms for like two in-game weeks.
also, don't feel like that ending hit as hard as it could have. i think it's an interesting choice to give you, to keep inhabiting a humanoid body or abandon it and become something weird and new, but i don't feel like they did enough to really sell you on the benefits of being weird and new. i don't wanna just sit in the muhroom miasma for all eternity, tell me why that's fun or cool or interesting beyond just "you won't have to eat anymore." But then on the other side, my connection point back to humanity in that scene was the botanist lady that i had basically just met and frankly did not care all that much about one way or the other. The scene itself I think is really good, but i don't think they laid the groundwork well enough to really sell it.
anyway yeah, overall had a great time with it, but it kinda farted out at the end for me, which is a bummer.
Okay now I can talk about my endings, which coincidentally are your endings, but the order and manner in which I hit them had a transformative effect on both.
So, I managed to luck into having the clocks lined up JUST right for me to finish the Gardener storyline AND the family storyline. I decided to check in on the Gardener first, because I was really curious about that story (and I suspected the family check in would be the end of the game).
As I'm nearing the end of the sequence, I'm offered the choice of staying in my body or leaving it. And I'm thinking about what it would mean, what I would gain, what I would leave behind. I know I want connection and community, but what do I mean when I say that? Do I want to be a part of something that's bigger than me, that looks happy, but that is so far removed from what I know that it is alien to me? Do I want that abstracted, almost heavenly unity? Or do I view community as something realer, harder, an act of defiance against a cruel world?
And then I remembered the family that I was helping find a new life, a new chance, a new hope. If I let go of my worries, I'd be letting go of them. How could I hurt people that had done so much with me, for me, who needed me?
And that I was thinking that way told me which answer I had to pick. I knew it would be hard to go back, but I knew why I would choose to do a hard thing.
And I hit one set of credits, and then the game kept rolling. And I walked over to the spaceport, and I joined my found family, and I read what the journey brought me - difficulty. Pain. Hope. Happiness.
And man alive did I get to crying, it was all so perfect.
But this does answer my question of, "How much of what I saw was planned/pre-ordained to work out that way." And it seems like the answer is, "It's not on rails at all, I just got profoundly lucky"
yeah honestly those endings would've hit WAY better in the reverse order
These pre-pre-alpha half-CGI trailers are always hard to judge anything by, but this seems a Souls-like that leans heavily into aesthetics inspired by Besinski on the one hand and Barlowe's Inferno on the other
either way if it materialises into anything concrete I wouldn't mind checking it out
oh also it made me tjink of @ChicoBlue's more horror inspired entries into the old forum battles back in the day
i gotta say if you're going to make something that similar to dark souls you better be bringing something pretty good/unique to the table, but i'll reserve judgment 'til it comes out
actually i'll be a little judge-y
the vampire/pale elf ladies in boob-plate and half-naked priestess lady do not inspire confidence
+4
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited May 2022
Just finished Citizen Sleeper
Sounds like I got the same ending as a lot of people the first run through, I left with Lem and Mina.
I did not finish the Gardener stuff, although I got far along enough in it to learn that the Greenway could adapt to the people there and that it could sustain my body, but that's when the clock ran out on the ship departure, and that actually had me sitting at the choice to wait or board after Lem and Mina for awhile, but I eventually decided to board and then Mina asks if you're family and I immediately started tearing up and the ending hit pretty hard.
I'll echo the sentiment that the resource management felt way too loose, I basically could have kept going indefinitely after maybe an hour's time, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it suddenly made a lot of stuff feel like busywork, and at some point toward the end of the game I was skipping cycles without even spending all of my dice
Overall though, really good experience nonetheless
EDIT: I just looked at the achievement list, and just going by the name the rarest achievement is something for absolute monsters, holy shit
Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2's gacha, that was easily my least favourite part of the game, I'm hoping that XC3 at least tones down on the boring "oh look, it's ANOTHER generic Blade you'll never use, woo" aspect, but given how popular gacha is I'm not overly optimistic.
I wonder if in a decade's time this will be yet another mechanic where you play an old game and go "oh shit, I completely forgot every single game from this time had to have gacha/turret section/regenerating health/cover shooting/2 weapon limit in it". Prolly not, monetisation mechanics tend to just slowly morph and get worse.
Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
edited May 2022
that track doesn't get enough love
whats your number one though
Indie Winter on
+1
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PaperLuigi44My amazement is at maximum capacity.Registered Userregular
Based on what we've seen of XC3 it's three specific pairs of characters that can fusion dance (plus room for a guest character) which sounds like the Blade mechanic is off the table.
Touch wood of course, but Monolith like to play around with the core mechanics in the Xenoblade games, none of them play exactly like the others.
I started playing FinFan XIV this year, starting from A Realm Reborn
Because the game's been running for ever and has had so many different "late game"s, there are SO many vestigial loot systems/currencies that I will never touch. Mostly because my first hour in any given set of patches is gonna give infinitely better equipment for dramatically less effort.
If I went big into fashion, maybe I'd bother? But I can't see what gear would look like until I've got it, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna spend hours grinding Primal Tokens and looking up where to turn them in just to see if that doublet looks cool or whatever
Yeah, ARR has a lot of weird shit connected to some of the end game content that even I don't know about (been playing for 2 years). The game's loot sources didn't start getting standardized until Heavensward. But once you reach an expansion's endgame, the only gear that matters is the best gear that you can get with Poetics (Ironworks, Shire, Scaevan, Cryptlurker). That will last you the entirety of the major patches, and about halfway through leveling through the next expansion.
Based on what we've seen of XC3 it's three specific pairs of characters that can fusion dance (plus room for a guest character) which sounds like the Blade mechanic is off the table.
Touch wood of course, but Monolith like to play around with the core mechanics in the Xenoblade games, none of them play exactly like the others.
I was reading a Twitter thread of someone playing Xenosaga Episode II (after having played the first one) and I found it really interesting how some combat mechanics from XC games can be traced all the way back to those days. It reminds me of how so many of From's games are essentially more and more refined takes on the King's Field titles.
I never wanted to get on the ship. I had put so much hard work into making it to the Eye and making it my home. I had JUST gotten my trackers uninstalled. I didn't want to leave and i didnt want to ve tracked again
The plan had always been that i was only entering the lottery to give Lem an extra shot, I'd just give him my ticket if i won. I felt bad for refusing this option but I just couldnt leave. Lem was ok with it though
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wzpzOAUzWw
Retro Commander is a post-apocalyptic real-time strategy wargame (RTS). 20220511 Retro Commander EA (Early Access Strategy RTS Base Building 4X )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky3pqewVpvs
Neptunia and SENRAN KAGURA join forces in this action-packed RPG! 20220511 Neptunia x SENRAN KAGURA: Ninja Wars (Action RPG Action RPG JRPG Anime 3D )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VOogpTE6lw
Your spaceship crashed on an alien planet. Explore, salvage, craft, trade, manage and upgrade your way back home! 20220511 Lost Nova (Exploration Relaxing Singleplayer Open World)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmMtIFivRsE
The continent of Runersia is home to six major powers with more than 40 bases, 100 knights, and 50 types of monsters. Select a ruler, organize knights and monsters into troops, and conquer enemy bases! 20220511 Brigandine The Legend of Runersia (Strategy Turn-Based Strategy Turn-Based Tactics )
also gnome's point about how the mobile space is largely ignored by mainstream gaming outlets reminds me of a longtime gripe I've had with how MMOs were kind of ghettoized, to (I think) their detriment and near-extinction
like, new MMOs would get coverage in the gaming press, but as soon as a game launched it became the province of a couple of specialty sites for people very deep in the weeds. and as a result of that I feel like the loudest voices - the front pages of your, idk, Gamespots and IGNs and whatever else was around in 2009 - weren't holding devs accountable for how their games developed (or didn't)
we had ten years (!) there where every new MMO launch had the pitch, essentially, of WoW + [thing]. "We're like World of Warcraft, but with adventure game puzzles that require real life research!" "We're like WoW, but with Bioware-style choices!" "We're like WoW but uh in the future? I think? I've been to space"
Everyone was looking at the big guy instead of at each other so each game would have one or two innovations that would have really helped the field, but that only ever existed in that one game because nobody was paying attention to anything but fucking warcraft. City of Heroes had the global ID system so you could see if your friends were online (even if they were playing different characters, or on different servers!) in 2004 yet there are games still running right now that don't have that or something similar.
The (really very good) Noclip documentary about Final Fantasy XIV tackles that head on. Part of that game's (wildly successful!) rebuild was leadership going, "Wait, has anybody here actually PLAYED any MMOs?" and then making everybody go play some friggin' MMOs
Which seems really obvious, but I'm just a small town pizza lawyer, what do I know
This is true but like 80% of that was that none of them had played warcraft, specifically. The revamp that saved the game mostly borrowed game design liberally from WoW. The original version of ff14 was incredible in the sense that it was like what if WoW had never been made, what if the only mmorpg that had ever been made prior was ff11, so let's get real weird and high concept experimental with the systems and not worry too much about what is known to work and not work in this design space. They weren't even really looking at everquest, they managed to lose the thread to that thing 11 was inspired by too.
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like, new MMOs would get coverage in the gaming press, but as soon as a game launched it became the province of a couple of specialty sites for people very deep in the weeds. and as a result of that I feel like the loudest voices - the front pages of your, idk, Gamespots and IGNs and whatever else was around in 2009 - weren't holding devs accountable for how their games developed (or didn't)
we had ten years (!) there where every new MMO launch had the pitch, essentially, of WoW + [thing]. "We're like World of Warcraft, but with adventure game puzzles that require real life research!" "We're like WoW, but with Bioware-style choices!" "We're like WoW but uh in the future? I think? I've been to space"
Everyone was looking at the big guy instead of at each other so each game would have one or two innovations that would have really helped the field, but that only ever existed in that one game because nobody was paying attention to anything but fucking warcraft. City of Heroes had the global ID system so you could see if your friends were online (even if they were playing different characters, or on different servers!) in 2004 yet there are games still running right now that don't have that or something similar.
The (really very good) Noclip documentary about Final Fantasy XIV tackles that head on. Part of that game's (wildly successful!) rebuild was leadership going, "Wait, has anybody here actually PLAYED any MMOs?" and then making everybody go play some friggin' MMOs
Which seems really obvious, but I'm just a small town pizza lawyer, what do I know
Even when playing solo because of the nature of the game damage calculations and connection to npcs is calculated in such a way that there’s always a sense of delay or jank
i was really vibing with it for the first like, 2/3rds or so. The last bit didn't really work as well for me though.
the stories also started to kinda falter for me near the end. Early on, you're meeting all these different people and getting pulled into all these little side stories that weave sort of this big tapestry of your life on the station. But the bigger questlines almost start to feel like they're trying to promote themselves to A-plot status, i guess presuming that you wouldn't be investing so much in them if you didn't see them that way (which clashes hard with the fact that i had more than enough to do everything and never had to ignore a story to work on a different one). The more serious deadlines were so generous that the idea that i'd even tick the clock to 50% full was kind of laughable. Also some of the plots just kind of petered out? Feng has maybe the longest questline in the game and it's weird that it just sort of stops at a certain point instead of getting into an "ending." Maybe i said the wrong thing at some point or missed a secret trigger that could've kept it going, i dunno.
But like, the first ending I got was the one with the guy and his daughter who couldn't get on the colony ship. And like, yeah, I did spend a lot of time with them, and yeah the writing at the end of that quest was very pretty and got me a little misty-eyed because I'm a sap, but I was still kind of blindsided when it suddenly cut to credits. That did not at all feel like it was a central enough plot to have that much weight assigned to it. Then I played for an hour or two more and met The Gardener, and that felt a bit more like an ending ending because it was the culmination of a plotline i'd been chasing from the beginning and was focused on my character's questions of identity, but even that was kind of undercut by the fact that the last leg of that questline takes a weird, tedious detour into farming mushrooms for like two in-game weeks.
also, don't feel like that ending hit as hard as it could have. i think it's an interesting choice to give you, to keep inhabiting a humanoid body or abandon it and become something weird and new, but i don't feel like they did enough to really sell you on the benefits of being weird and new. i don't wanna just sit in the muhroom miasma for all eternity, tell me why that's fun or cool or interesting beyond just "you won't have to eat anymore." But then on the other side, my connection point back to humanity in that scene was the botanist lady that i had basically just met and frankly did not care all that much about one way or the other. The scene itself I think is really good, but i don't think they laid the groundwork well enough to really sell it.
anyway yeah, overall had a great time with it, but it kinda farted out at the end for me, which is a bummer.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Okay now I can talk about my endings, which coincidentally are your endings, but the order and manner in which I hit them had a transformative effect on both.
As I'm nearing the end of the sequence, I'm offered the choice of staying in my body or leaving it. And I'm thinking about what it would mean, what I would gain, what I would leave behind. I know I want connection and community, but what do I mean when I say that? Do I want to be a part of something that's bigger than me, that looks happy, but that is so far removed from what I know that it is alien to me? Do I want that abstracted, almost heavenly unity? Or do I view community as something realer, harder, an act of defiance against a cruel world?
And then I remembered the family that I was helping find a new life, a new chance, a new hope. If I let go of my worries, I'd be letting go of them. How could I hurt people that had done so much with me, for me, who needed me?
And that I was thinking that way told me which answer I had to pick. I knew it would be hard to go back, but I knew why I would choose to do a hard thing.
And I hit one set of credits, and then the game kept rolling. And I walked over to the spaceport, and I joined my found family, and I read what the journey brought me - difficulty. Pain. Hope. Happiness.
And man alive did I get to crying, it was all so perfect.
But this does answer my question of, "How much of what I saw was planned/pre-ordained to work out that way." And it seems like the answer is, "It's not on rails at all, I just got profoundly lucky"
XIII can stand alone completely.
XIII-2 kinda requires you to keep pushing through 3 to get a satisfying wrapup.
In terms of my favourite FF of the old school ones it’s a tie between 7 and 8. Only one I’ve never played is 12.
FF7 Remake is so well done it feels like a different category all of its own, its shocking to me how much better it is than every other game in the series. The writing especially but I’m also a massive fan of the combat system and normally I don’t really care about the combat systems in FF games
The tensest part of the game for me was as the ark ship was preparing to launch and I still had Bliss, Yatagan and the Gardner things going and I was trying to finish them all up. Ultimately, I decided that I couldn't go on the ship with them and waved goodbye to Mina while Castor stood beside me, annoyed but understanding.
In the end I had to choose between the Gardner and bopping around space with Bliss, Moritz and Ankhita. Bliss or bliss?
And I decided to free myself of the corporate flesh and grow into something strange and beautiful.
But yeah, the gameplay at the end was meter maintenance with inevitable progress locked behind ticking clocks. It kind of reminded of the engaging desperation to nuisance curve of Survival Kids for the Gameboy.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
These pre-pre-alpha half-CGI trailers are always hard to judge anything by, but this seems a Souls-like that leans heavily into aesthetics inspired by Besinski on the one hand and Barlowe's Inferno on the other
either way if it materialises into anything concrete I wouldn't mind checking it out
oh also it made me tjink of @ChicoBlue's more horror inspired entries into the old forum battles back in the day
actually i'll be a little judge-y
the vampire/pale elf ladies in boob-plate and half-naked priestess lady do not inspire confidence
I did not finish the Gardener stuff, although I got far along enough in it to learn that the Greenway could adapt to the people there and that it could sustain my body, but that's when the clock ran out on the ship departure, and that actually had me sitting at the choice to wait or board after Lem and Mina for awhile, but I eventually decided to board and then Mina asks if you're family and I immediately started tearing up and the ending hit pretty hard.
I'll echo the sentiment that the resource management felt way too loose, I basically could have kept going indefinitely after maybe an hour's time, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it suddenly made a lot of stuff feel like busywork, and at some point toward the end of the game I was skipping cycles without even spending all of my dice
Overall though, really good experience nonetheless
EDIT: I just looked at the achievement list, and just going by the name the rarest achievement is something for absolute monsters, holy shit
I wonder if in a decade's time this will be yet another mechanic where you play an old game and go "oh shit, I completely forgot every single game from this time had to have gacha/turret section/regenerating health/cover shooting/2 weapon limit in it". Prolly not, monetisation mechanics tend to just slowly morph and get worse.
It also has the second best rendition of battle on the big bridge
whats your number one though
Touch wood of course, but Monolith like to play around with the core mechanics in the Xenoblade games, none of them play exactly like the others.
Yeah, ARR has a lot of weird shit connected to some of the end game content that even I don't know about (been playing for 2 years). The game's loot sources didn't start getting standardized until Heavensward. But once you reach an expansion's endgame, the only gear that matters is the best gear that you can get with Poetics (Ironworks, Shire, Scaevan, Cryptlurker). That will last you the entirety of the major patches, and about halfway through leveling through the next expansion.
Steam: pazython
It's Big Stupid but it is still cool
'Battle on the Big Bridge,' from Final Fantasy 5
Ended up “one more cycle”ing until almost 4am.
I never wanted to get on the ship. I had put so much hard work into making it to the Eye and making it my home. I had JUST gotten my trackers uninstalled. I didn't want to leave and i didnt want to ve tracked again
The plan had always been that i was only entering the lottery to give Lem an extra shot, I'd just give him my ticket if i won. I felt bad for refusing this option but I just couldnt leave. Lem was ok with it though
http://www.audioentropy.com/
get ready for...
yeah this is the steam port of the PS4 remaster
it is the dark souls of crab on crab action
under my gunbrella ella ella ey ey ey
This is true but like 80% of that was that none of them had played warcraft, specifically. The revamp that saved the game mostly borrowed game design liberally from WoW. The original version of ff14 was incredible in the sense that it was like what if WoW had never been made, what if the only mmorpg that had ever been made prior was ff11, so let's get real weird and high concept experimental with the systems and not worry too much about what is known to work and not work in this design space. They weren't even really looking at everquest, they managed to lose the thread to that thing 11 was inspired by too.
Yooooo, this looks sick