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Any gamers around here?

Started by Agramon, June 21, 2013, 02:55:17 AM

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Blackleaf

These cutouts were spotted in the audience at the The Lions vs Colts game a few days ago.

"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Hydra009

Won my grand strategy game.  Used the ol' classic of making allies all around your enemy.  Blockaded them and used agents to assassinate VIPs and sow insurrection.  I love it when the war is won before the first shot is fired.  :)

Mr.Obvious



It's been a long, long time since Christmas seemed this far away, guys.
"If we have to go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, requesting 69.

Atheist Mantis does not pray.

Blackleaf

#3618
My brother let me borrow his PS4 so I could play FVII Remake. I won't spoil anything, but the name is misleading. At first, it does seem like a straightforward remake, with new stuff added to pad out the story and give the players more to do in Midgar. But quickly, you start to realize something is up.

Side note: I'm just now realizing Midgar is named after Midgard. lol. Final Fantasy VII naming conventions: Take a word, chop off a letter, done.

Anyway, my opinions of the "remake" are mixed. When it comes to gameplay, it's pretty awesome. The player can take control of any character in their party during combat, and your inactive characters actually behave competently without your input. During this time, you have free movement. You can take cover behind boxes, support beams, etc to avoid damage. You have a button for standard attacks, which fulls up your ATB gauge. Once you have ATB bars filled, you can press the action button to pull up a menu and select special attacks, spells, items, summons, etc. If you played the original, Materia works very similarly, with some adjustments to suit the new fully 3D gameplay. You just slot them into your weapons and armor, and you have that Mareria's magic. Now, though, you only get one Magnify Materia, which is basically this game's version of the All Materia. This is probably to keep the player from completely breaking the game, casting Haste, Barrier, and Regen on your entire party in one turn. lol.

One cool thing they did was they took what used to be Limit Breaks, like Braver, and turned them into weapon abilities. Each weapon has an ability, and once you use it enough times, you can use that ability with any weapon. Weapons can also be improved with points you earn from leveling up and getting certain items, so if you like an old weapon, you can still use it. It won't be completely obsolete after you get a new one.

Summons are back too, but they're a little different. Rather than just hitting the enemies once and then disappearing, your summon will basically act like an extra member of your party. With a summon active, any member of the party can use their ATB bars to issue commands to the summon, which have two different attacks or spells to choose from. Only one summon can be used per battle, and only when the battle has gone on long enough. This time, some summons can't be used indoors or in small environments, particularly the bigger summons, like Leviathan. So you'll want at least one character with a small summon like Carbuncle or Cactuar equipped.

The game has an easy mode, a normal mode, a hard mode unlocked by beating the game once, and a mode meant to more accurately emulate the semi-turn-based gameplay of the original. I played on Normal, and it was hard. Some of the normal enemies are more difficult than the bosses. It's kind of bizarre. But it forces you to think about your strategy. Gone are the days of mindlessly spamming attacks until your enemies are dead. These enemies will kick your ass if you try that. That being said, the Assess skill, specifically meant to tell you the enemy's weaknesses, is pretty useless a lot of the time. I found myself Googling enemies to figure out WTF was going on way too often.

As for the story, here's my spoiler-free opinion. If you're a fan of the original and its spin offs, you might enjoy the story. But if you're new to the series, this game will confuse the hell of you towards the end. Up until a certain point, it's easy enough to follow. But then a certain character pops up, without introduction, and the player is just supposed to know who he is. Part of me understands why they did what they did. I mean, why waste resources remaking a huge game like FFVII if people can play the original? But I also found the changes really irritating sometimes... One important thing to note is that this game is part one of a new series of games. The original game had three disks to fit all the story on it, and this covers most of disk one. It's still a full length game. They just fleshed out the story more to get more out of it.

[Spoiler=Story spoilers]So pretty early on, you encounter these phantom-like creatures that sometimes impede your progress and sometimes help you, depending on the circumstances. Near the end, you learn that these are Whispers, who exist to protect fate. Any time something changes in the timeline, they show up to try to protect it. Red XIII knows this because Aerith touches him, and that gives him knowledge because...reasons? My problem with these things is they'll basically just derail the story every time they show up. Sephiroth does a similar thing. At first, I thought he was a figment of Cloud's imagination, but then the others see him too. He's introduced pretty early in the game, and shows up randomly, so when it gets to the part of the part of the game where he was originally introduced in the original, it's like, "Oh, great. Him again." After saving Aerith from Shinra, they decide to defy fate, destroying the Whispers and attempting to defeat Sephiroth. If they had actually succeeded in beating him, that would have been interesting. Imagine a part 2 with Sephiroth in it. But no, you beat Sephiroth, but he's got plot armor, so he defeats Cloud in a cutscene, says something cryptic, and disappears.

So now the timeline is changed. This entire game was basically an excuse to give the writers free reign to do whatever they want in part 2. Aerith no longer has to die, but maybe she will, maybe somebody else will die instead. It will be interesting to see what they do in the future, now that they no longer have to follow the original's plot, but this game irritated the fuck out of me. It's like if you're new to the story, you'll be completely lost when it assumes you just know things. But if you're familiar with the original, it'll get on your nerves when the game changes things and the plot gets derailed by Whispers. The pacing is generally good, particularly in the parts where the Whispers don't show up for a long stretch of time. But once you get to Shinra HQ, the story drags really bad. Especially towards the end. It turns into one large boss gauntlet that gets exhausting after a while.

Also, apparently Avalanche is a larger organization now. Before it was just Barret and his crew, but now Barret's group is just part of one small chapter of Avalanche, which is ostracized for being too "extreme." And yeah, they do kinda go the route of making the player ask, "Are we the good guys?" I mean, they're literally eco terrorists, even in the original. But the rest of Avalanche is literally at war with Shinra, so it doesn't seem like they're without blood on their hands either. I have a feeling this is setting up for conflict in part 2. Which given how long this one took to come out, I expect to come somewhere around the year 2040.[/spoiler]
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Mr.Obvious

Got hollow knight void heart édition.
Like it, but starting to realize I might never finish it... Gets really hard and I doubt I'm in half of the story yet.
"If we have to go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, requesting 69.

Atheist Mantis does not pray.

trdsf

"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

Hydra009

*watches Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay video*
Wow, this is so immersive!  Even the police sirens sound like they're right outside!
*pauses the video*
*sirens blaring*

Hydra009

On another XCOM binge. 

There's something supremely unnerving about encountering an utterly unknown adversary.  But it's so satisfying to take the time to figure out what makes them tick, adapt their technology, and then use it to beating the stuffing out of them.

My very first introduction to these aliens, way back in the 90s, was stumbling on a Chrysalid in a gas station's shop.  It had done *something* to the civilian in there and it lumbered out of the doorway, grotesquely deformed but still basically human.  My squad filled it full of lead and still it kept coming.  A high-explosive rocket slammed right into it, but instead of falling dead, its skin ripped open to reveal another Chrysalid underneath.  And the worst part?  It was smiling.  My soldiers shot at it until their rifles were empty, then switched to pistols and grenades.  It was nearly face-to-face with a solider before a lucky shot felled it.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  Not long after it got right back up and very nearly chased down a nearby soldier before another soldier, this one with an autocannon, filled it with incendiary rounds.

Never turn your back on a Chrysalid.  Keep firing until they're extra dead and keep a grenade ready just in case.

drunkenshoe

So did anyone get cyberpunk 2077? I'm cruious about the AI does not follow thing. Apparently, the game lacks AI reaction and follow up? Is that kind of a mistake even possible?
"science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. ıt is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good." - tp

Blackleaf

Quote from: drunkenshoe on December 16, 2020, 08:55:29 AM
So did anyone get cyberpunk 2077? I'm cruious about the AI does not follow thing. Apparently, the game lacks AI reaction and follow up? Is that kind of a mistake even possible?

It's a mess. Wait a few months and see if they fixed the bugs. And don't get it on previous gen consoles (PS4, XBOX One, etc), because those look like garbage.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Mike Cl

When a new game comes out--especially one with a lot of fanfare--I let it be on the market for at least 6 months.  Cyberpunk is a classic example of that, maybe even of the extreme type.  It may take a year to make it work correctly.  I will not attempt this one until at least the first big fix--and only if that fix seems to have worked.  The only game that I prepurched was Fall Out 4--glad I did; but I did luck out on that one.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

drunkenshoe

Hmm...so my assessment was OK.

I can't buy that. My pc can't handle it and it is too expensive in the local currency. But honestly, I don't want it either, because all that extreme hype put me off. Whenever something gets this kindof absurd hype, I automatically lose interest. I can't help it. I think this one was done with the death threat thing.
"science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. ıt is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good." - tp

Blackleaf

The hype buzzing around it was actually what got my attention, and the fact that they kept delaying it made me think they cared about the quality of their product and didn't want to release a broken game. Seems they needed to delay it another year. I also heard they were a self-publishing company, so didn't have to worry about watering down their vision, yet corporate apparently thought it was okay to show only their most optimized versions, and never the previous gen console graphics this game was primarily marketed towards. It didn't hurt that they were the same company that beat Bethesda's Skyrim for Game of the Year with The Witcher 3. But then the game finally comes out, and the reviewers errupt with a resounding...meh.

From what I've heard, it's a great game, if you can overlook all the game breaking bugs. I mean, it's inevitable that an open world sandbox game like this release with bugs, but there's a limit to how much people will put up with. Skyrim was buggy at launch too, and still has a mod specifically designed to fix bugs they never got around to, but it was fun enough that people were able to look past that and enjoy the game. Cyberpunk 2077, though, seems like it should be in early access.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Hydra009

Quote from: Blackleaf on December 16, 2020, 01:36:15 PMFrom what I've heard, it's a great game, if you can overlook all the game breaking bugs.
I've been hearing complaints that it's a fairly lackluster and shallow RPG experience as well, which really hurts.

That said, it's still possible to patch and expansion pack and mod the game up to a great state, not unlike Skyrim.  I would particularly enjoy some sort of faction system and/or companion system.

By the time all that's done, people are more likely have the uber hardware necessary to play the game with ray-tracing enabled, so it definitely pays to sit on this title.