The Gaming Den

http://indiegames.com/2014/02/trailer_s ... _zomb.html

Looks like a sequel's coming up for a game I rather liked when it came out. The jump from 2D to 3D and the increased ship customization might end up creating a substantially different experience, though.

I'm rather looking forward to it, it's a pretty basic system so I think it's hard to screw up too much.

I picked up the first 2 Shantae games on 3DS, and they are both amazing. The first one held up as a fun game in spite of originally being a Gameboy Color title, easily on par with Link's Awakening and the Oracle of ___ Zeldas. I just started Risky's Revenge, and I'm a little awed at how relentlessly pretty the sprite art is.

So my girlfriend is playing Diablo 3 lately, and would like me to join her. I did mention that I hated Diablo 2 so much that Blizzard need to decapitate themselves then offer their heads to me (yes, in that order) as the first step for forgiveness. But I'm considering maybe grabbing it and surprising her. So I'd like some opinions.
1. How fun a game is it, putting the always-connected bit aside?
2. How much bandwidth does it eat?
3. How much can you visually customise your character? Does every female monk (for example) look identical other than equipment? Or did they at least understand that it's an MMO so it needs to have MMO-grade customisation?
4. She's a witch-hunter, and it sounds like she needs someone to stand in front of her and hit enemies. Barbarian or Monk?

1. this going to be very subjective
2. not much as far as I can tell.
3. only equipment, can be recolored
4. monk is healy/tanky/supporty/crowd controly

1) It's alright.
3) Not at all. It's not an MMO, I would stop thinking about it like that right away or you'll be let down by your expectations. It's pretty much just a hack and slash. It's kinda flashy, and has a solid feel, but it's just hack and slash for hours on end. If you didn't like Diablo 2, I can't imagine what part of this game you'd find enjoyable.

It's a hack-and-slashy that requires you to always be connected to their servers. That's practically the textbook description of MMORPG.

But fair enough. I'll avoid D3. She's not going to join NW, which is fine seeing as I'm bored with it, but we do play Terraria together, and used to play Trine 2 together, there are options.

Posted on this before, but I thought Diablo 3 was shit terrible, which really surprised me given that I never put Diablo 2 on a pedestal to the extent so many other people did, so I felt like my expectations were pretty reasonable. I don't need every game I play to be teeth grindingly hard, but I found D3 easy enough during the mandatory standard difficulty that I just started face tanking everything with my wizard out of pure, disinterested spite and hilariously enough this didn't seem to result in any real detriment to my combat performance. It's like the game couldn't be assed to try killing me.

Amusingly enough, it sounds like they managed to fuck up the difficulty of the game coming and going. Plenty of people have told me that at one point Inferno difficulty was if anything too unreasonably hard. I've been told that Nightmare and Hell modes give you more interesting things to try your toys out on and that Nightmare in particular is probably what Normal mode should have been in the first place. But I'll be damned if I could tell you if that were true from personal experience--I cut bait with that baby on the grounds that I had already fuckin' seen the shitty plot through and have better things to do with my life like eating paint chips or getting mad at Silva and Shadzar posts.

On the bright side, your experience might end up being better than mine was, because apparently there's been yet another difficulty revamp since I played that piece of shit.

I first played Diablo I on the PS1 and it was fun as a gauntlet-esque action game.

D3 on the PS4 will also have controls suitable for a console controller, I'll have to check it out.

Man, I just want Phantasy Star Online 2 to come out in English.

Diablo III isn't an MMORPG because each of those letters means a different thing and Diablo III isn't even close to qualifying for the first M.

Koumei wrote:It's a hack-and-slashy that requires you to always be connected to their servers. That's practically the textbook description of MMORPG.

Yes, and the DnD PHB is a novel because it's words written on paper

On the bright side, your experience might end up being better than mine was, because apparently there's been yet another difficulty revamp since I played that piece of shit.

Just in the past few days (like feburary 24th or something) there was a major overhaul to almost everything in the game, and they've moving away from the auction house and are going to shut it down.

I haven't played in the 2.0 patch yet, I don't even have it installed any more, but it might turn out well. As with all major overhauls, it'll probably take another patch or two to smooth out any accidental wrinkles in the revised balance.

I've played the new patch of Diablo 3.

The big change is apparently the loot system. I felt there was little point playing from my advanced characters that were already loot screwed. (all the more so with monsters now auto-balancing to your level).

So I started a new one of the class I was most familiar with (wizard) to see any differences and advance from a non-loot screwed starting point.

I started on the second easiest difficulty. It was easy enough that on the first time I had to leave when I came back I set it to the hardest difficulty available to me and haven't had any problems. Thanks to increased XP gain and such from that I'm not even through the first act and I'm already well into the mid 20s on character level.

Loot IS improved. It is (marginally) more interesting. Drop rates, at least at low levels are better, for class appropriate cool items and legendaries at least (though I keep getting boring legendary boots that might as well be rares).

I have even gotten one item that is genuinely interesting and has dramatically effected my character build and game play. Which is interesting and certainly almost never happened before.

Character skills seem to have been buffed, especially damage output on the sometimes underwhelming wizard skills. Which if you read the patch notes have seen some ludicrous increases in damage output. In game, on harder difficulties with auto-ballanced monster levels... it just feels... marginally less frustrating than it used to.

So far "elite" and "champion" monsters I have encountered have yet to have been complete "fuck you" mobs like they frequently were before. But so far they've all been single affix bar a couple of doubles... And while I think some numbers and the "fuck you you can't dodge this shit! Tank it with item check or GTFO, and papery dodge reliant Demon hunter or wizard builds can just auto fail lololololol!" elements seem to have been somewhat improved... BUT They are still basically exercises in frustrating annoying kiting, or in some cases forced stand there and eat it with your face tanking. And I think ultimately their apparent refusal to rethink the genuinely "fuck you" basic nature of many champion/elite affixes is going to hurt the "new" reworked game the most.

I somewhat enjoyed playing it. But not enough that I didn't wander off some time on Sunday bored with it about 24 hours after re-downloading it (and it is fucking huge), and haven't been assed to go back since.

... also and I think this is fucking vital... somewhat obscured amongst the rest of the larger bullshit issues Diablo 3 had at launch... it contained a certain element of a bait and switch the early game first act/demo/open beta/press release content was more promising than, well, anything after that. End game, even the run through just before end game was a "Fuck you go to Real Money Auction House!" item check and worse etc...

I have a creeping suspicion that the much improved content in the free patch is basically a new bait and switch to make you buy the add on. Which seems over priced, with not enough content, at least two of the three main pieces of which were CLEARLY (and indeed in one case rather openly) dropped from the original release exclusively to be sold later in a giant fuck you to customers.

Also it looks like the new gold drop rate/reworked pricing which suddenly makes early to mid game gold prices on gem combos and stuff acceptable is looking suspiciously like it suddenly curves into giant "fuck you" territory once you start approaching the end of the old level cap content/beginning of the new level cap content.

I had a pile of gold from the "old generous" gold drop rates. I decided to strip some gems out of shitty old items. I could not afford to do that to more than one of them. The prices for that were... unfortunately very steep.

And the gold stuff is all... weird and seems like some sort of cover for some sort of real world currency bullshit... which doesn't seem to exist so... I don't know.

Anyway. I suspect this game still turns into an unfun grind at higher levels, but they MIGHT have improved it before that at least... the question is if I can be assed playing it far enough to ever find out.

Also there is a significant question as to whether there is anything altogether desirable in the expansion, which I suspect boils down almost purely to whether there are a crap load of interesting loot items exclusive to it or not.

Fair enough, I think I'll give it a miss. She appreciates that I actually looked into it and asked around and glanced over the classes on the Blizzard site.

Seemed germane...

Wait what? Since when was Diablo 3 a game of skill and perseverance?

Kaelik wrote:Wait what? Since when was Diablo 3 a game of skill and perseverance?

Pro-grind retards are all over the interwebs right now defending every insanely stupid grind imaginable in every game ever with the firm and righteous belief that even the lamest grinds ever are "Skill and Challenge" and that they personally are uber awesome skill masters because they are personally willing to not only say... left click on the same tree for 4 hours a day, but because they are ALSO prepared to go on forums to defend that act and wear it as a badge of pride.

Diablo 3 on release had actual direct anti-skill mechanics like it's deliberate "fuck you gear check because dodging attack animations simply does not work" hit box detection on 99% of attacks. But fuck it you had to grind for 1200 hours or go spend real money and those dumb fuckers who were prepared to invest like that were sufficiently invested to want to defend it and keep it that way so as not to "devalue" their "skill based achievements".

I've been recently been watching this with dumb fuckers on the Starbound forums defending the shitty general state of that game, and a bunch of really dumb assholes on the Everquest Landmark forums defending a shitty lumber grind, squeeling like stuck pigs at the mere promise of basic unavoidable quick travel features, demanding incredibly punitive death penalties and basically whining on wanting all the worst features of MMO skinner boxes exaggerated 100x over that the rest of the Gaming Community has labelled as evil and made copious fun of. They demand these things with pride, they think of them as a mark of their personal achievements, and they actually believe a game can be successful, even massively successful lumbered with such incredibly dumb ideas.

Oh and Silva has been on these very forums in the mere recent past totes going on about how actual video games totally shouldn't have fucking save game features because if hardcore mode isn't mandatory his "achievement" is being "devalued".

You are seriously surprised that some comic artist somewhere either believes in this sort of attitude or knows of it's existence?

PS and "Theme Park" is a term the pro grind moron crowd has latched onto as their own version of denouncing "bad wrong fun"

I totally get the perseverance bit: you have to put up with vast amounts of bullshit on most of those games, that's basically what grinding is.

Okay, I loved Shantae: Risky's Revenge, right? So I figured that I'd like the original Shantae and so I boughts it offa the Nintendo eShop.

The game in general it seems a bit dated compared to the newer game, but whatever, it was 2002.

But so the prologue was pretty great. Then I get to the area immediately outside the first town, and then the difficulty spikes up like a perky puppy with a glandular problem.

Seriously, the game makes me scream and go apeshit. It makes me want to smack the snake out of Matt Bozon. I mean, just GRAAHGH.

Now I have to beat this game that pisses the beer out of me or I'll never be able to sleep.

So a typical Friday night, really.

Koumei wrote:I totally get the perseverance bit: you have to put up with vast amounts of bullshit on most of those games, that's basically what grinding is.

Grinding is perseverance, but perseverance doesn't have to be grinding. There's a difference between investing time to eventually win Rogue Legacy with Sir Lee and grinding gold until one can just tank monsters like an idiot. Games that use you-shall-not-pass grinding to increase playthrough time rather than as a safety net pander to the latter while fucking over the former.

Shrapnel wrote:Okay, I loved Shantae: Risky's Revenge, right? So I figured that I'd like the original Shantae and so I boughts it offa the Nintendo eShop.

The game in general it seems a bit dated compared to the newer game, but whatever, it was 2002.

But so the prologue was pretty great. Then I get to the area immediately outside the first town, and then the difficulty spikes up like a perky puppy with a glandular problem.

Seriously, the game makes me scream and go apeshit. It makes me want to smack the snake out of Matt Bozon. I mean, just GRAAHGH.

Now I have to beat this game that pisses the beer out of me or I'll never be able to sleep.

So a typical Friday night, really.

I got it on 3DS, and I only made it through by ruthlessly exploiting save states. You have one save slot you can use anywhere, and I tend to save after every couple of dangerous jumps. Also, getting a map online to find where stuff is will save you a lot of grief.

It helps that I found a debug code. But still... fucking racing mini-game. Fucking Rottytops.

I got, today, a mail with my Early Access Steam Key for Shadowrun Online, which will go early access live(kinda sorta alpha stage i guess) on monday.
I AM CURIOUS!

Just finished The Witcher 2 today. And well, the combat was broken. A significant amount of the time (maybe 30%) I would try to use a sign (read: spell) and nothing would happen. Not because my character was busy doing something else, but because the game couldn't be fucked to respond to number keys.

It also did the typical "story via longwinded NPC" bullshit that makes me start skipping past everything. I've got a pretty decent tolerance for verbosity, but logorrhea can suck a dick, especially when it comes in the form of NPCs' vomiting forth meaningless inanity.

And it had random drops for important things in a single player game. And the whole only being able to drink potions out of combat thing. And the whole incentivize grinding thing. And the whole terrible user interface thing.

I give it a D+, because at least it was pretty, and I'm fond of the Witcher books. For comparison, I gave the first game a B+.

Diablo 3 is really bad. The levels of hell and whatever are only difficult until yhou get the right loot. It is all grind until you can pass. Nothing ever changes, and the boss fights, and uniques are not original or interesting.
Get her to play torchlight. that is actually a decent game.