Chatting about games

The best 'modern' open world game for me was something like Mankind Divided from Deus Ex, that was pretty interesting. More a quality over quantity type of world. I'm currently replaying Assassin's Creed 1, and while good it also kinda shows that early jump to the genre where it is more 'big' than interactive. Cities are just a bunch of npcs that go nowhere surrounded by buildings you cannot enter or interact with.

>asscreed1
Looks cool honestly. Heard the combat was ass though so not sure I’ll play it, although I’m not sure if combat has much of a center Al focus or not.

> Deus Ex

I love the worlds in the two most recent games. Real dense and feels like no space is wasted.

That's my ideal world: Not an open world, but dense labyrinthian spaces where no drop goes wasted. The raw size doesn't matter even a little

Seems like I got too good at raggy, ti the point the game doesn’t really fight back as much as I’d like anymore. Even on NUR+. Guess that’s the sad thing about games that don’t go batshit insane, they stop giving you that arena line rush once you’ve studied the combat and enemy’s/encounters too much. Real shame. Still am having fun though. Mainly said it here since I now sort of feel how some people feel about games they love once they get too good at them.

https://youtu.be/fEtHfsYvU0U
What do people think of how this game is looking so far? Seems like it has promise.

Watched it again, here are my thoughts:
The art design is INCREDIBLE! The creature design looks fantastic and has a very creative spin on insects of our age. Even the first boss who seems generic on paper looks very visually unique imo. Favorite looking monster is definitely the scorpion, fucking badass.
The magic ability seems cool, but is tied to cool downs sadly. IIRC not many souls games even have cool downs, so that is wierd(considering the fact as well that seems to be where all the cool properties are at, it’s a bit sad). The bosses mechanically seem fine, but man if they don’t look spongey….. Surprised the game doesn’t have a posture mechanic it seems. The stance mechanic seems cool I guess? Would have to see more of it to really comment on it. Does seem bosses aren’t resistance to magic properties to extra points for that as well.

>Wukong
Damn, this game has Dark souls' hitstuns.

Visuals are really impressive, but the more I learn about it the less excited I'm:
>lvling
>cooldowns
>equipment
Really? They're in every game now. Really tired of homogenisation of video-games.

>Stance system
That piqued my interest the most. I really liked this system in Nioh, so I hope it'll look like something close to it (but I don't get my hopes high there). The stances changed your dash and had unique abilites. You could also transition from one stance to another using some attack strings. Guy mentioned that the grip changing according to different move, but It's IGN, so  it may just mean "ooooh, shiny animation, so heckin' cool!".

I'm most curious about how this will stack up to Wo Long.

Yeah it feels like a game that takes all the things I hate from Souls, and a lot of cool things, leaving me a bit whelmed. The hitstun and 'you go, i go' stuff really doesn't do it for me. But the artstyle, the stances - they seem very interesting.

Could end up being a sleeper hit. I remember when Nioh hit a lot of players kept playing it like Souls though, so roll > heavy attack > roll - so there might be a danger that with this game they'll end up doing the same and not even use what's there and hate on it as a result. I hope not though.

>stacks up to wolong
Haven’t played that or the nioh series as a whole so can’t comment(nor am I considering it).

More Wukong footage from a livestream, while not looking like the best in the genre, it does seen to have some interesting quirks, I think it will find its niche like Nioh did.

Will check it out later.

Honestly, least favorite type of game critic is the ones who act like they are in the dev team and say something completely out of their ass like:”If I were to design this game, I would get rid of this entire chapter and add a new type of enemy”. Really grinds my gears considering they ALWAYS never watch development videos and such.

Lulcielid wrote:More Wukong footage from a livestream, while not looking like the best in the genre, it does seen to have some interesting quirks, I think it will find its niche like Nioh did.

That pole stand to dodge shockwaves is certainly of interest.

>least favorite type of game critic
Agreed. I also really dislike the one that discusses classic games with a half-assed attempt at contextualizing the history surrounding the game. For example, there's a YouTube game retrospective series I occasionally hate watch called, "Was It Good?" and they'll often say things like, "Tenchu on PS1 has no excuse for poor voice acting when Metal Gear Solid came out only a year later with stellar voice acting." And like, bruh, are you REALLY going to forget we just got "Die monster you don't belong in this world!" only a year prior? Or the fact that MOST games of that era had garbage voice acting? It feels deeply ahistorical to damn facets of a game based on what one exception managed to pull off close to that time.

On another topic, has anyone taken a look at En Garde! yet? I got a review code for that last week, and I can't stop playing it. It's got a pretty simplistic direct moveset for your character, but it's all about interesting arena design and environmental interactions in a way that a lot of modern action games feel terrified of (if I see a flat circular boss arena one more time...).

ER sucks.

Birdman wrote:ER sucks.

And here I was thinking you liked it after talking about it in the server, lol

Didn't I say all the builds were uninteresting and go nowhere?

I did like it at first. But it has no staying power. Worth a run-through atleast. Not worth touching again.

En Garde looks really cool, it's not on console so I'm giving it a pass for now but legit looks amazing fun.

> reviewcode
How'd you swing that, for your youtube channel?

>ER
You did, but I thought you liked it overall still since you stuck through with it, haha. You tend to be very particular with games, so I assumed you sticking with it meant you liked it.

>Review code
yeah, a friend tipped me off to a Google form the dev had to register for review codes, so I filled it out. Got my code on the day it came out. Was a bit surprised considering the channel's size, but here we are.

>You tend to be very particular with games
ER definitely got a bit more than I usually allow. I was also playing online with a friend and didn't want to just abandon him until he was done. Quickly found all builds (thst interested me) sucked. Had some hope with a few leads but they went nowhere interesting.

That's a shame. Can't say I'm surprised though; I was more surprised that you seemed to like it at all, lol. Someday I'll play it properly just so people will shut up about "you didn't even play much of it" when I criticize it.

>if I see a flat circular boss arena one more time...
Better not play KH2 (or 3 for that matter) for a while. The arenas aren't all like this, but half the superboss encounters take place in one.

>Kingdom Hearts

That's a shame. It's not like, a dealbreaker for me because that feels like it's just most action games today, but it is something I wish they'd do less.

>not a dealbreaker
Good to hear. Like I said, the arenas aren't all like this, just wanted to give you a heads-up for the superbosses.

>most modern action games
I've been complaining about how there's very little in terms of variety in modern games, yes. Not just because of the arenas, mind you. I fear that it's more or less about time for some Action RPGs to start getting 'inspired' by nuGoW1's take on RPG mechanics, since it's been years since that game came out. And since it won GotY, and it's also successful in terms of sales, even more reason (not to mention that things copying GoW isn't unheard of).

>Just wanted to give you a heads-up
Thanks, mate!

>variety
Yeah, I didn't really think about it until I started more intentionally going back to 6th and 7th gen action games and now I'm like... goddamn, there used to be a MUCH wider variety of crazy and weird shit. Not all of them were hits, but even when they were bad, they were often bad in interesting ways. But nowadays it's like, here's a million AA and indie action games: Most of them are soulslikes or platinumlikes, and some of them are good, but when they're not it's just not particularly interesting to see "what if that AAA dev you like but bad" over and over again.

>there used to be a MUCH wider variety of crazy and weird shit
The talented people have aged, so they have retired, or they are no longer as creative as they used to be. What's left is an endless chasing of trends. That said, there might be one or two exceptions here and there, such as SoR4, but like you said, most of the popular titles are just copying others, and/or doing more of the same.

The footage from WH40k : Space marine 2 is underwhelming for me. The atmosphere is great and Enemies really feel like a swarm, But there is no vivid silhouette nor color codes for recognizing their roles. One of the strong points of Space marine 1 is thay you can prioritize enemies because they look very different. I don`t know about lores well, But even this enemy desing follows WH40k authentically, I don`t think that it is not a good choice.

And that makes me concern that this game would be an another zombie coop shooter.

>gow 2018 copy cats
There have been a ton of games that took inspiration from it over the years. Even halo(copied its 1 shot camera gig……. Did not go over with fans there to say the least** yet it did with 2018 since “muh immersion and story” while that broke that games illusion of that every second or so**). As well as the turtles game taking inspiration from its RPG mechanics, stated by the developers IIRC. Have no idea why, but that’s the case. We really need rob meyer to be gameplay lead for the next game. As is, Jason is going higher up in the ranks as usual(was lead gameplay dude in raggy) and it won’t be too long until he’s director………

>Halo 1-shot camera

Wait, WHAT?! You mean Infinite? I didn't even notice when I played lol

> 1 shot camera
MGS5 was the first to do it, and arguably did it better I'd say. Halo Infinite doesn't have a one-shot camera at all, not sure where that's coming from all of a sudden.

> space marine 2
@nepu47

Generally disappointed too. Mostly since it looks to play identical to the first game with no real additions. In general they've only shown 3 enemies so far, the Termagaunts (swarm with guns), Hormagaunts (swarm with melee) and Tyranid Warriors (big guys with swords). These are the front line dudes, nothing too special. They'll probably add the Carnifex and Harpy, and maybe the Lictor (google them). One of the boss fights will no doubt be the Hive Tyrant or Swarm Lord.

The downside of the tyranid army is that they are designed to be brightly painted, in stark purple with white, which makes them standout. The 'modern videogame aesthetic' just makes them brownish brown which makes them hard to differentiate.

>Bald-faced LIES about Halo Infinite

I was gonna say lmao; I don't remember Halo ever having that. I remember Infinite having SOME scenes with a long lingering camera, but definitely not a one-shot deal.

Though you know what I really wish Halo and other FPSes with cutscenes would do again? That thing where you get a dynamic shot at the end of a cutscene where the camera rotates behind the character's back and zooms in to their head to transition back to gameplay. I replayed Metroid Prime recently and had forgotten how fucking cool that looks.

>no halo infinete 1 shot camera
Isn’t there? Remember there being a lot of rant about it in the community.

IIRC there are a lot of long lingering cutscenes that stay in first person, but not all of them. It's not particularly consistent either, which kinda bothers me.

>1 shot camera
Not quite the same thing, but Dead Space’s camera never breaks(dead space 2 cheats at one spot and fucked it up).

>MGS5
It was pretty disappointing to go from the stylish camera work of past MGS games to 5’s more modern approach. Still love the game though.

It's a nice thing to try and aim for, but also feel they don't play with it enough. Legit the only time I felt it added to it was during the initial Baldur fight in GoW2018 where the camera man basically runs to Kratos to see him grab that tree to slamdunk Baldur with. That's a fun use of the 'one shot' approach.

In general it mostly leads to just extremely boring compositions and stilted shots. It's criminal that CGI cutscenes from 20 year old fighting games look cooler and more interesting than movie-level productions in games today.

Honestly, what action game does cooldowns right?

No one. It's like saying which game does unskippable cutscenes right.

Time is always a terrible way to balance a mechanic imo, outside of very few fringe instances like MMOs. In World of Warcraft there's a few very powerful moves that have a 1 hour long cooldown (or had, at least). In a game of that scale, that's workable I'd say. But in general in action-games cooldowns simply mean "I will use this move immediately so I can use it as much as needed in this fight".

It completely circumvents planning, strategy and resourcemanagement in favor of 'press button when it's lit up'. With GoW2018 going even a step further by having an ability that resets cooldowns for more 'press flashy button to do flashy things'.

The only game where I could say that MAYBE it wasn't terrible was Astral Chain, and it just felt out of place there. You had to use energy to use specific attacks from your Legions, which were on cooldowns (minor ones, like 4-5 secs). I think they did this to push you swapping Legions constantly, but honestly I cannot be sure. In that game's case you almost constantly forget it's there since the CD's are so short.

Guess world of Warcraft takes the cake then.

Kingdom Hearts 2, maybe? You've got a mana bar that can be used in however way you want, with some really powerful attacks and healing instantly draining the bar, and then after that, the mana bar is on cooldown and you have to wait for it to come back. So when you're on the back foot, there's that choice between whether or not to cure, or use a limit and then leave yourself unable to use magic for some time. But KH2 also gives you ways of cutting down on the cooldown with things like ethers, and mana drops.

If you can use whatever you want until the bar drains, it's probably meter management (which I personally enjoy a lot) and not cooldowns.

>cooldowns
>right
Eh? Some games minimize the horribleness(Astral Chain and maybe Doom Eternal) but for the most part they instantly drag down any game they're in.

What do you guys think of modes dedicated to having a lot of enemies? You know the LDK difficulty from DMC? Would you be happy to see that in more games? Although it might not fit in with all of them.

I think it tends to add very little if it's a bonus mode, since the combat isn't designed around it. If you're going to do hordes of enemies, build around it i.e. Dynasty Warriors or NGII respectively. Otherwise it's just a fun powertrip mode that isn't indicative of the game itself.

Nadster wrote:What do you guys think of modes dedicated to having a lot of enemies? You know the LDK difficulty from DMC? Would you be happy to see that in more games? Although it might not fit in with all of them.

I think that works for contained areas in a game or triggerable events than the entire experience. I read that Namco's First-person brawler Breakdown would have benefited from such a mode.

Well, Jim is retiring. This could either go incredibly well or terrible.

I expected hellboy the game and it looks weird. I don`t know what to say, and what this game would be.

I’ve really been loving manipulating enemy ai in action games lately. Really underrated aspect from my perspective. Adds a fuck ton of strategy and creative freedom.

> hellboy
Saw it too, game looks really cool but the animations and the hit-feedback feels so insanely off and weirdly timed... makes it very offputting.

> ai manipulation
It is honestly where the real mechanics shine yeah, especially in games like MGS and stuff. What game currently sparks that with you?