Sabo

So because I talked negatively about your precious little masterpiece I automatically suck at the game, I  am anal and nitpicky, and I'm overblowing minor details? 

Okay, first of all, thank you both for reminding me why I rarely bother to visit this place.

Secondly, I absolutely love how both of you dismiss my point on the platforming by countering with your SUBJECTIVE reasoning....

lolol bubuh teh platforming sucked in previous games

I didn't say anything about the platforming being good or bad in the previous games because that is subjective. I was being objective and the platforming in the previous games is objectively better than this new game. The previous games platforming sections incorporated many more elements and were designed with far more attention. This new game has objectively worse platforming because it does the absolute bare minimum with it, that is a fact. Rather you think these sections in the old game were good or bad is moot and I honestly don't care for your piss poor subjective reasonings.  The point stands the platforming in the new game is a massive downgrade when compared to the previous ones. Cry all you want, it won't change this simple truth.

Secondly, distance and spatial awareness  is hardly a minor complaint. That's a LARGE component of a game using melee combat. Attacks should behave consistently. When an attack behaves consistently the player is able to recognize and learn the attacks range, how long the attack is active, how long an attack takes to recover, how to properly avoid an attack, how to properly counter an attack, etc.

This is Game Design 101.

When you add an element that completely throws ANY of this basic IMPORTANT information out of whack, it fucks with everything. This isn't a minor issue,...

Imagine a Fighting Game where the hitboxes for a characters attack could randomly expand by a single pixel at any moment. That single pixel, while seemingly minor and unimportant,  can fuck with everything. This is the very reason why developers are so careful when it comes to tweaking hitboxes and even adjusting frame data by a SINGLE frame. These small changes that may seem "minor" can have MAJOR implications.

And did you honestly dare to compare the puzzles in this game to the likes of Portal? Are you fucking delusional? Portal does indeed have a single mechanic but the ways it explores that single mechanic is VAST. Portal does a lot of things with it's single mechanic. Simple stuff such as limiting where you can place portals to traverse to the next area is just the tip of the iceberg. These areas where you can place portals start getting linked to timed mechanics. Then  Portal evolves to start including momentum into the equation and all the different ways you can experiment with that alone. And just when you think there's no more tricks up it's sleeve the game throws in the gels that starts to add layers of gravity and new ways to play around with the  physics. Even stuff such as avoiding hazards (gun turrets for one example) start to require newer and more complex solutions to get around. Then in the final stretch Portal starts incorporating ALL of it's elements into single rooms where the solutions start requiring some serious thinking to get through. You know, like a good puzzle SHOULD do. GoW does absolutely NOTHING even close to this. You are giving the game FAR more credit than it actually deserves but considering how much your jerking off over how "perfect" the game is, I'm not even surprised.

And in cased you guys missed it, I did say the game was worth playing. I did like the story and I did enjoy my time I spent with the game. It's just a game I can only play once because the thought of playing through it a second time around just doesn't interest me. The gameplay is lacking, I didn't particularly care for it.

If you like it then good for you, I guess. I clearly didn't get the same enjoyment out of the game as you both did.

I've played it and I don't think the game is that good. I agree with the praise the game gets when it comes to it's narrative because it honestly surprised me with how good it is but the gameplay has plenty of faults. I don't see any aspect of it's gameplay being close to brilliant or well designed.

All three of the core aspects of this series (platforming, puzzles, and combat) are terrible in this game compared to previous entries. 

Platforming use to be an essential part of the experience, it was actual platforming where you would have to time your jumps and judge distances. You would have to avoid hazards and traps and the previous games would even incorporate combat and puzzle solving into the platforming sections. Now platforming might as well be nonexistent in this game and I hardly even consider these sections to be platforming sections. You just hold a direction and push the Interact button every once in a while to jump to the next portion. These sections are so completely on rails that they require zero effort to get through, this is a huge far cry from how the previous games handled this gameplay element. The only interesting thing that ever happens during a "platforming" section in the new GoW is that a conversation might happen between Kratos and The Boy. That's it, that's not an exaggeration or a stretch, dialogue is literally the only interesting thing that will ever happen during a platforming section. After the 4th or 5th platforming section in this game I realized what their real purpose was, they're set as something for the player to do while the game loads in stuff for the next section of the game.  Platforming is no longer treated as an integral part of the GoW experience, these sections no longer require actual challenge or even provide variety to the overall gameplay. Instead platforming has been extremely downgraded to being used as a playable loading screen. 

Puzzles, another defining part of the previous GoW games, also stack up poorly compared to previous games. The vast majority of the puzzles in this new game are just bland and are all solved with the same solution- throw axe at thing. That's the solution for damn near every puzzle in the game. There really isn't much for me to talk about when it comes to the puzzles in this game because there really isn't anything substantial or well designed here. It's all so incredibly basic, within two hours of playing the game the player will be conditioned to look for glyphs or gear cogs to throw your axe at to solve puzzles and it stays like this for the entire game. The game never dares to introduce something more complicated than that. The only time there is even a slight jump in difficulty is when you're scanning your surroundings trying to figure out, "Ok, I know I have to throw the axe at something but I don't see what that something is yet..." Some time may pass and then it's, "Oh, there it is",  and the player proceeds to *throw axe at thing* and move on. The puzzles in this game are nowhere near thought provoking because they are designed to be solved by children.

And now we get to what I consider to be the absolute worst part of the game, the combat. Granted, I've never considered the combat in this series to be good, but I have always considered the combat to be passable. That being said, I find the combat in this game to be an absolute mess because it suffers from so many poorly implemented design decisions. The most obvious one being the camera and the thing is, the game is aware that its camera is a problem. This is a camera angle that works just fine for shooters because the majority of the action is happening at mid to long ranges. The need to understand distances between you and enemies isn't that important because the distance between you and them is almost always going to be several feet and yards. However, with melee combat the majority of the action is happening at close range. The need to understand the distance and spacing between yourself and the enemy as well as the players spatial awareness is far more important and this camera angle fails at delivering this information accurately. The game tries to work around the problems in a myriad of ways but none of these solutions are really viable and some of these solutions actually make the game easier than it should be (I'll explain later). 

**Now I'm only going to talk about my issues with the combat when it comes to the camera. I could go on about enemies, bosses, the awful RPG implentation that creates a game more focused on stats and less about player skill, the poor balancing of player moves and abilities, enemy group formations relying on cheesy shit (this game LOVES placing snipers who constantly spam attacks on higher terrain for one example), as well as many other things but I don't want this post to get too long so I'm not going to. I just want to focus on my problem with the camera for now.** 

The first thing the game does to work around the camera is a homing mechanic. Since the distance between you and enemies can be unclear the game will compensate for this by having Kratos and enemies home in on each other when they're within range (well... usually this happens but not all the time). This creates issues where Kratos will home in on unattended targets and can make Kratos feel unyielding at times. This homing feature is more noticeable when fighting bare handed or using Rage of Gods, the homing mechanic becomes much stronger when you're fighting in these states (the homing on Rage of Gods in particular will have Kratos darting nearly full screen to attack an enemy which can be really silly looking). Remember though this homing feature works both ways since it's also applied to enemies and this makes enemy attacks harder to read. I may think I am out of range of an enemies attack only to find that the enemy may slide right in front of me in an instant since their attack actually homed in on me. This erratic behavior of when an attack will have the homing property creates an inconsistent understanding of attack ranges and timings, core information that SHOULD be easy to understand and therefore reliable but the homing mechanic makes it all muddled and unreliable. This is not a good thing because it created a wall of distrust between the game and me. I couldn't trust what I was seeing because it could very easily have gone another way if the homing decided it wanted to kick in or not.

Further acknowledgement  for unclear distance recognition can be seen with Kratos' attacks themselves. There are about 30 types of Runic Attacks in the game, now I can go on and on about how awful Runic Attacks are (lack of variety, absurd cooldown times, terrible balancing, etc.) but for this specific conversation I want to point out how almost all of the Runic Attacks are a projectile or AoE type of attack. Now take a simple glance at the Axe Upgrades specifically and take note of how many of those upgrades involve Kratos throwing the axe or flinging the axe in front of him in large, sweeping arcs. Runic Attacks and Axe Upgrades are attacks intentionally designed to eliminate the need for solid understanding of enemy and player positioning, information that should be more vital to understand for a game centered around melee combat (ie- CLOSE range combat). The cherry on top to drive the point further home of the game working around unclear distance recognition is the Blades of Chaos, a weapon that WASN'T suppose to be in the game to begin with. The most likely reason it was even brought back though is because of the weapons very nature, the Blades of Chaos naturally work around the inherent problems of the camera angle since it's a weapon designed and known for having long, sweeping attacks. 

Bottom line- the game is aware that it is a melee focused game using a shooter style camera angle so the majority of attacks in this game are  mid-long range... instead of being close range... where melee combat should be focused...

The next "solution" the game incorporates to work around the camera is a threat location system. Since the camera provides terrible spatial awareness the game tries to compensate for this by having markers appear around Kratos that point in the direction of off screen enemies. These markers will even change color depending on the threat level (red marker meaning the enemy is actively attacking). This sounds like a reasonable system so far until you actually start playing the game and get further into it. As you get further into the game the enemy encounters start getting larger. It's in these larger encounters where the amount of threat locators placed on Kratos can get downright comical. The first time I saw 5 threat locators get placed on Kratos at once I had to pause the game because I could not stop laughing at how ridiculous it was. These threat locators also have the unintentional effect of making larger encounters actually easier to work through than they would be in any other game. Since these threat indicators will change colors depending on the level of threat it's corresponding enemy currently represents, all you have to do is wait to push the dodge button when you see one go red. You don't have to worry about your distance, positioning, or even proper timing to avoid an attack because the game did all that work for you. All you have to do is push a button when you see a threat indicator go red. Simple and unrewarding.

The hilarious thing is this game wouldn't of had to jump through all these hoops to work around the problems the camera represents if they would've just went with a more traditional camera angle. When all your problems can be solved by simply switching the camera view it becomes apparent that the developers stuck with this camera out of sheer stubborness. Why? I have no idea, they clearly thought they needed to change GoW in order to move forward and in some aspects I think the change worked very well. 

I love the new narrative direction the series is headed in. The world building and the characters is a HUGE step forward for the franchise. I always looked forward to the next tale Mimir would tell as I sailed to my next location and I loved any scene that had Baldur in it (Baldur is easily one of the best villains we've gotten in a video game in a long time). I was also very engaged in watching the relationship between Kratos and The Boy grow because of it's swell execution. Watching Kratos struggling to come to terms with who he was and being very guarded about his past with his son was honestly the highlight of the game for me.  Kratos showing shame for the things he's done was a side of Kratos I thought we'd never see, and seeing the fight within himself to be better so he can set a proper example for his son is pretty relatable (Kratos as a relatable character? WTF?).  The moments where Kratos is basically begging his son to be better than him come off as genuine and these are the moments that stuck with me long after I beat the game because of how well executed they were. I honestly feel like this game is worth playing simply for the story. It's THAT good.

This same level of praise isn't applied to the gameplay though. This new GoW's gameplay just comes off as a game suffering from a severe identity crisis. In it's pursuit for change the game has completely lost sight of what it was. Platforming? Completely gone. Well designed puzzles? Gone. Combat? Not even passable. I just feel bad for the game. I feel like I shouldn't be kicking it when it's down but instead be helping it back up and pointing it to the right direction.

I've been writing off the claim that 'the media has a clear Sony bias' as fanboy nonsense for a few years now but after seeing all the praise this game has been getting... Ehhh... This is the first time I've felt that maybe, just maybe, there might be some truth to that claim.

Played through a few games these past two months.

-Final Fantasy Type-0 HD.

Ehh, it's okay. Story is stupid as hell (which seems to be par for the course for FF games these days) and the characters are pretty generic. You can tell this game was originally a handheld game though, the level design is super simple and the combat system is decent but was clearly designed around a handhelds limitations.

Disappointing that the only effort that went into this HD remaster was all visual related (which is pretty hit or miss TBH), the gameplay could've used a lot of tweaking to bring it up to snuff.

Overall I'd say the game is a 6/10. I only paid 10 bucks for it so I feel like I got my money's worth but I wouldn't pay no more than $15 for it.

-Grand Kingdom.

Fun game with some issues that hold it back.

The character balance is kind of whack, Paladins and Valkyries are just so much better than every other class it almost feels like you're required to have both or at least one of them on your team. The Specialist classes feel underpowered, you can make them work but you really have to build a team around them which seems to defeat the purpose of a Specialist class. I've always looked at a Specialist class as a class that is suppose to compliment a team and offer a team flexibility. A Specialist should not dictate how a team should be built.

The "online" component that is War mode feels half baked, it would've been cool to actually fight against other players instead of fighting against other player's teams being controlled by AI. This mode really brings the character balance into focus, you're going to see A LOT of Valkyrie and Paladin teams. Every now and then you'll come across an interesting team composition but for the most part you're fighting pretty similar teams over and over again which can make War mode feel very repetitive.

The game lacks content, this game is really all about it's combat system. It doesn't have much else going for it besides that. Thankfully the combat system is incredibly fun, experimenting with all kinds of different team compositions and strategies was always entertaining so the combat never really got boring for me. Of course if you're looking to go for Hero status in War mode then you're going to want to bring out a Paladin and Valkyrie because everyone else is going to be using them.

Overall I really enjoyed my time with this game. It's far from perfect but I did find it fun. I'd say it's an 8/10.

-Lords of the Fallen

Just... ugh. Calling this a Dark Souls clone would be a compliment because that would imply this game was at least near or around Dark Souls level. It's not. It's not even close to being on Dark Souls level. Hell, it's not even on the level below Dark Souls. This game isn't a Dark Souls clone, it's a Dark Souls try-hard wannabe. The only positive things I can say about the game is I thought some of the Armor sets had cool designs and the game is a pretty easy Platinum.

I'll give it a Don't Waste Your Time/10.

On 5/10/2018 at 8:57 AM, -GD- said:

Quality is subjective. You are entitled to your opinion, but calling others “retarded” for liking a game makes you sound ignorant, since they too are entitled to their views (again, there’s no absolutes with opinions).  You don’t like his games, and that’s fine. Some people find them to be guilty pleasures, or just like the “choose your story” format. There’s no need to get so riled up over his titles. It’s kind of sad tbh. 

Oh, the old "subjective" defense... How original... 

You might of had solid ground to stand on if David Cage's games weren't OBJECTIVELY bad in various ways. 

On 5/8/2018 at 8:40 PM, madmaltese said:

Beyond: Two Souls.....sheesh. Don't know why Sony would give this on Plus the month before Detroit, would make you want to not get Detroit if anything. 

LOL, David Cage is a hack. No idea how this idiot actually gets people to buy his shit "games" let alone how he gets a publisher to willingly give him money to make his garbage. His writing is so god awful, the fact this douche is actually successful is a tragedy.

I can't believe there are actually people hyped for Detroit, WTF is wrong you people? Are you idiots or just retarded?

Went back to playing MHW to try to finish getting the Platinum. Just need 5 more crowns but of course RNG is fuckin' me over...

There's a lot I like about the game but there's also a lot of stuff in the game I find to be insanely obnoxious. For the past 100 or so hours of playtime, I'm only noticing the obnoxious shit. I think this could quite possibly be the most trollish game I've ever played. There are just so many things in this game that I consider to be blatantly bad design, and the kicker is- it is done intentionally. Capcom KNOWS better than to do a lot of the shit that is in this game but they purposely did it anyways. I have no idea how MH veterans have tolerated this shit for a decade. When the inevitable MHW2 comes around, I'm going to pass. I can tolerate this troll fest once but I have much better things to do than put myself through this nonsense a second time around.

Assassin's Creed Origins is meh. I'm starting to wonder if I'm playing the same game as everyone else because for all this talk of this game being a fresh and new direction for the series, this seems like your standard Ubisoft game. The game follows the Ubisoft formula down to a T.

Finally decided to check out Assassin's Creed Origins. Put about an hour into the game so far and I'm not really feeling it. Combat is kind of whack and the stealth is simple shit. I just played a game with easy stealth gameplay (TEW2) so I'm not sure if I want to play another game with simple stealth gameplay immediately after... Might put this game on hold for the time being and play something else but I'll give it a couple more hours just to see if it picks up and gets better.

3 hours ago, Rebel Rebel said:

Is Primal fun? Who has it?

For like the first two hours. Then it gets mundane and repetitive.

It's not my Playstation, the game crashes on all platforms. The main areas seem to be Chapter 7 and 8, the shooting gallery, and the "fire walk" on Chapter 14 although the game can crash in other areas ( I know this because I've experienced it crashing in other areas). Nightmare and Classic mode are especially prone to crashing. 

Ugh... I am hating TEW2 right now. This fuckin' game just crashed on me... I'm going to have to play through 3 whole Chapters all over again. The game crashed on me 7 times in my first playthrough and now it's crashed on me for the second time in my Classic playthrough.

Classic mode only lets you save 7 times total so I'm trying to space my saves out and use them strategically. But now it's starting to look like I might have to start saving at moments I don't want to just so I don't have to worry about losing progress if the game decides it wants to shit the bed again. 

I am never buying another Bethesda game ever again, such a piece of shit company. 

Taking a break from MHW and have been playing The Evil Within 2. Currently on Chapter 8 (Nightmare mode) and so far difficulty hasn't really been an issue. I think the stealth in this game is piss easy, the AI is like PS1 levels of bad. Resources are all over the place so I don't even find the resource management to be strict. I don't think I've seen my Gunpowder supply drop below 100 now that I think about it. 

The only problem I've been running into is the game crashing. This game has crashed on me 4 times now, the last time it happened I was forced to replay a significant chunk of gameplay over again since the game didn't auto-save for over an hour for some damn reason. Looked online and apparently game crashes has been a problem since the game has launched.

Why the hell hasn't this shit been fixed yet?

I fuckin' hate Bethesda... They have no understanding of what proper QA is.

I think I'm done with MHW. The constant grind with nothing to show for it thanks to the terrible RNG has killed my interest in the game. There was only a couple trophies left that I would've needed for the Platinum (the Large/Mini Crowns for every monster) but those are also RNG related so it really kills the motivation to chase that Platinum.

HR- 104.

Total number of Warrior Streamstones acquired- 27

Number of Warrior Streamstones for the weapon I actually want- 2

Total number of Hero Streamstones acquired- 3

Number of Hero Streamstones for the weapon I actually want- 0

I hate RNG....

3 hours ago, Saucer said:

I'm about halfway through Fire Emblem Echoes. 

 

After years of not really playing JRPGs, I'm on my third in row. For some reason I don't like playing them on consoles but I'm fine with them on handhelds as long as they have a full voice acting. 
 

IMO it's because a lot of the JRPGs on consoles tend to go with a more modernized approach (usually dumbing down a lot of game systems and being semi-open world) in order to appeal to Western audiences. Handheld JRPGs for the most part stick to the traditional ways because they are more aimed at the Japanese audience. 

You know, farming for the Augment parts wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't such a tedious task to unlock Investigations for Tempered Elder Dragons...

Anyways, did a lot of Tempered Elder Dragon runs these past two days, only got one part I can actually use. I got two parts for the Hammer and got four parts for the Bowguns but those are weapons I really have no interest in. Although I might just make one of the Bowguns to put these parts to use unless there's a way I can trade them. I might make a Hammer as a secondary, not really feeling the Greatsword. It's too damn clunky.

1 hour ago, Hot Sauce said:

 

It only gets worse when you unlock augmentation.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

To augment your weapon you'll need to farm the elder dragons for an item with a lower drop rate than gems and when the item does drop, it's weapon specific to a couple of weapons (ie. the 'axe' version of the item works for charge blades and switch axes, but no other weapons) so even when you do get one it's unlikely it's the one you want.

 

Have fun. 

Bad enough the drop rate is aggravatingly low but to then add weapon specific bullshit on top of it to make the chances to get what you need even lower?

LOL, fuck that. I don't mind grinding but there is such a thing as too much RNG and this is definitely too much.

Still playing Monster Hunter but I'm starting to get annoyed with the game. The Gem drop rate is ridiculous... I thought Plates were annoying to get but Gems are much worse (speaking of Plates, I'm getting them like crazy now that I don't really need them).

I spent like 2 hours killing Legiana over and over again just to get the Gem, I'm really not looking forward to farming some of these Elder Dragons for their Gems. 

Just now, モンキー said:

Let me know if youre gonna be on today, I'll send an inv. 

I'll be hopping online here soon actually. Probably in about two hours, going to start cooking something to eat and then take a shower but after that I plan to hop online. 

How is the netcode for that? I've been setting my filter to Same Language so I've been avoiding Japanese players. I assumed this would help prevent lag. If the netcode is good though then I'll change my filter settings.

I do have CM on my friends list, he's the only person from here that I have. He's rarely online when I am though and when he is online he tends to be playing SFV so I don't bother him. I'll send him a message though to send me a Squad invite.

It's not a game breaking mechanic but it is player breaking. It's too easy to exploit in order to ruin other players experiences. That's much worse than being game breaking IMO. Unless you join with people you absolutely know, you run the risk of running into BM players whose only goal is to troll.

Hell, this is something I forgot to mention because it's not exactly tied to what we're talking about but it is another form of trolling I've seen, players intentionally dying so the reward pay out will decrease.

There's a lot of assholes out there in the online world, I would just like the option to close one of the doors so I can try to filter them out as much as possible. I tend to only play with randoms because I don't really have anyone on my friends list (LOL... :() and the ones I do have, they're rarely online when I'm online. So I'm unfortunately running into these types of players. It's not often yet, but it is starting to happen a bit more than I'd like which is why I'd like to be able to nip this in the bud ASAP.

5 minutes ago, -CM²- said:

Nah, they all totally do. A bad player will be a bad player and the mechanic can be annoying but it has its upsides. The most important one being you can knock players out of the stun status. Ive spent a lot of time in multiplayer and it's a nonissue as long as you use proper spacing and know where you should be.

 

Only thing I heard of that truly sounds like it sucks is preventing players from carving but i've yet to come across this

Dude, I was literally standing RIGHT next to a Long Sword user as we were both drilling the tail on a Rathalos and I did NOT get hit at all. Same situation with another player using Dual Knives except instead of attacking the tail, we were attacking the head of a Rathalos. I was getting hit constantly. I've had Light Bowgun users shoot through me yet I get hit by Bow users. The weapons do not all share the same rules.

Interrupting carving is the least of the issues. I've seen guys intentionally cancel out other players charge attacks. I've seen guys prevent other players from using items. Keep in mind, this is only week 2, the trolling is only going to get worse. Much worse.

This game isn't on handhelds anymore. We're on consoles now and consoles have a MUCH larger online community. Unfortunately, this massive online community comes with the caveat that there are going to be a lot of trolls. Something as simple as allowing players to hit each other only leaves the door wide open for future problems. This is a huge oversight on Capcom's part and they really need to add in the option to turn this feature off. 

If you want to play with it on, be my guest. But I would like the choice to turn it off because I don't want to deal with the bullshit that is only going to get worse.

4 hours ago, -CM²- said:

Huh? All weapons hit other players. I don't think every combo is interruptible by every attack though.

No they don't. I was standing right next to a dude as he swung his Long Sword around and it did nothing to me. Stand near a player with Dual Knives and I'm getting hit constantly.

This is getting a little beside the point though. Bottom line- I don't like players being able to hit other players and want an option to turn it off. It adds absolutely nothing to the game and only encourages trolling bullshit.

So I was bored and decided to answer some SOS signals and try out the co-op. Why do some weapons hit other players while other weapons don't?

I think the idea of being able to hit other players is pretty dumb to begin with since everyone is going to swarm the monster as soon as it gets knocked down but the fact that only certain weapons will hit other players is just really dumb. They need to add an option to where you can just turn that off if you want because I don't like it. It makes no sense to me.

3 hours ago, Hot Sauce said:

 

You have to save it to an item loadout from the 'Change Equipment' -> 'Manage Loadouts' menu when you're at an item box.

Yeah, already figured it out. Thanks though.