Video Games

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 10:35 pm

Dynasty Warriors outside of the campaign mode is pointless and tedious. But so is Smash Bros.

I'd rather play Dynasty Warriors.

Halo 1 was released before it was ready. It's initial design document did not actually have a single-player mode at all, and was completely co-op or PvP.

-Crissa

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 11:19 pm

Blicero wrote: Concerning Halo, I have the first one for PC and it's pretty good. Not as good as, say, Half-life 1 or 2 or Shogo or Serious Sam or whatever, but it's far from horrible. The only experience I have with the sequels is from multiplayer played at other people's houses. I found that if you're playing splitscreen online and aren't really trying to be the best, it's not a bad experience.

Yeah, it's not exactly that I think Halo is a bad game. It's just way overrated and nothing special. It's a big franchise for what really should be a very forgettable game.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 12:10 am

I agree. Even being a Halo fan myself I think Call of Duty does a better job.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 12:15 am

Call of Duty does a better job because they did everything Halo did, but with government money.

Call of Duty would have never been made had Halo not be made years earlier.

It's not really a fair comparison. Like saying Warcraft does a better job than Ultima Online.

-Crissa

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 12:52 am

Halo had its chance to upgrade with the release of ODST. They chose not to. I think I'm free to blame them for it.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 1:38 am

PhoneLobster wrote:
cthulhu wrote:If you're australian it's less than 60 bucks on steam.
Considering Australian bandwidth issues that's like telling us its less than 60 bucks by psychic alien telepathy.

Eh, I brought it on steam when I got home from work and played it after dinner.

@Crissa: 90% certain youve got america's army and CoD mixed up.

Call of duty was actually made before Halo, so you're comprehensively wrong.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 3:32 am

PhoneLobster wrote:How could you find the tiny, clunky, star wars rip off immersive?

How could running around on the usual tedious talky quests in a "tiny town" space station full of star wars rip off races (hint the "sexy" girly aliens are twilek replacements, the warrior dudes are those pig men etc...), how could that be immersion?

Anyone with a hint of critical observation skills should be screaming "not immersive NOT IMMERSIVE!" as they are constantly jarred by the tiny scale of the population and rooms in the "mega giant super space station", the short walks to the next loading point, the endless elevator wait to get to the next tiny area, the various god damn dead ends that you magically could not pass, the bizarre surreal CRPG architecture where guys just hang around (endlessly and stationary) in funny dead end rooms with no actual facitlities or private chambers or indeed ANYTHING attached, except a random store room or computer room for barrel looting or quest hacking points or something.

And the "characters" you meet, a bunch of lame reskinned star wars rip offs, with utterly lame agendas and crap character. Predictable demands and story lines, and that same stupid stupid star wars dark and light "morality choice" bull shit foisted wholesale onto a new game.

Anyway you didn't finish it. Care to consider why you didn't finish it?

I played far more than an "hour or two" of this game. And if you think my criticisms end at "typical boring crap in the space station" you'd be thinking wrong. This game got FAR worse as you got into the rest of it.

Far worse.

I didn't finish it because I was only over at my friend's house for a few hours and it hasn't been important enough to me spend the time over there and finish the game. Anyway, it'd be kind of a dick thing to go over there mainly to play his 360.

I did pick up the whole Star Wars similarity, and I still found the place interesting to poke around. For such a tiny area, the space station had a lot of things to do.

I honestly do not care if something is retreading old ground because it can do a decent job regardless.

I enjoyed what I played, and even got into it. I don't bother wondering what flicks those switches that make me get into the game. Not while I'm playing it, anyway.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 4:11 am

Halo didn't get a chance to upgrade because Microsoft said no. That's why their dev house is offlimits to any microsoft personnel, and Bungie bought themselves back a controlling interest.

And no, Call of Duty is 2004. Halo is 2001.

I'm not an FPS person, but I can use wikipedia, and I actually study the industry. America's Army was put out later with a different purpose. The military works with many companies to get their product - soldiers - into a games and media.

PL, you're not arguing against anything game related. You're arguing that technology isn't immersive enough for you.

-Crissa

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 4:32 am

Crissa wrote: PL, you're not arguing against anything game related. You're arguing that technology isn't immersive enough for you.

-Crissa

It occurred to me that in this case, he's pissed off by the presence of, for want of a better word, tropes.

He might as well be pissed because there's a species of pretty skinny people proficient in magic who don't do melee that much, because they're OBVIOUSLY a ripoff of elves. Or that there is a species of tough-ass warriors with a bad reputation, because they're so obviously based on orcs.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 5:37 am

Crissa wrote:PL, you're not arguing against anything game related. You're arguing that technology isn't immersive enough for you.

Bullshit.

KOTOR pulled the same shit and did it better.

Meanwhile Morrowind and CO prove that the technology can in fact be a lot better.

So ass to you on that Crissa.

Also in other news remember I said there is a LOT worse than that in Mass Effect.

The obvious failed KOTOR edition reskin and essentially crap maps and writing in the space station is nothing.

LATER you have an incredibly lame "moon buggy" mini game thing that is on the level of 486 game play and technology (and demo/indi rather than commercial title at that).

LATER you learn just how incredibly useless your NPC team mates are and how the whole combat system is total ass.

LATER you go to all the typical worlds of the star wars republic er... whatever the space union thingy was just in time to fight off invading storm troopers er, whatever those unmemorable bad guys were.

But worst of all LATER you fight through countless battles on maps where EVERY SINGLE SIDE QUEST in the game takes you through pretty much the same single fucking room full of crates!

THE SAME ROOM FULL OF FUCKING CRATES I SAY! again and again and again and again

edit: Oh and all your fighting always happened in that room. Because the enemy AI was basically "all mobs meet the PCs in central room due to giant mindless psychic rush YAY!!" every single blasted side quest map. You just went in, ducked behind the first crate and took everyone out with your pistol or whatever while your two companions ran backwards and forwards in lines of fire not shooting the enemy (which didn't even meaningfully distract enemy fire often enough) then you scraped them off the ground post combat and maybe did the same thing next time you hit a big room of crates, IF any mobs hadn't been drawn in by the first mysterious psychic AI call to kamikaze fire fight.

Really every map that wasn't core story line was basically a slight, very slight variation on the same 2 or three map templates (mine, space ship, warehouse)

They were almost certainly all procedurally generated material (or a lame cut and paste manual equivalent by lazy map makers). Only not on the spot (thus losing all appeal) and also just really small, crap and repetitive even for that sort of thing.

And the star map, AAAAH the star map and the dumbing down for xbox console halo retards, and and and... Oh is there a limit to the crapnesss? I think not. IT NEVER ENDED.

Manxome · Post by **Manxome** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:59 am

Caedrus wrote:And Thousand Year Door has nothing that compares to the action in Bowser's Inside Story. There is just nothing in there that plays like the boss battles in BIS, especially the later ones.

Yeah, the boss battles are very different. And I like the Thousand-Year Door ones better.

Thousand-Year Door combat plays more like traditional CRPG/tactical combat, with an emphasis on selecting moves and resource management, with some action commands thrown in for fun and style. Technically you can use superguards to get through the game without being hurt, but that's a very difficult all-or-nothing deal, so realistically the action commands just give you minor boosts. If you're only using regular guards, you can execute every action command perfectly and still die if you're making the wrong decisions.

Bowser's Inside Story combat plays like a turn-based action game. There's much less tactical breadth in the available commands, fewer enemies with special rules you need to learn and exploit, and no meaningful limit to the number of items you can carry (leading to nigh-infinite healing). But the action commands are harder, way more varied, and way more important, with flawless execution always (I think) meaning you're completely unscathed. Lots of enemies have unique, complicated patterns for you to learn, and in some boss fights, one button press can be the difference between taking no damage at all or being chain-stunned to instant death from 75+% health.

I'm not saying that Thousand-Year Door is a better game, just that I enjoyed it more.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:03 am

Most hated game? Ooh, that's a really tough one.

I'm tempted to say Grandia 2 for PC, because ~30 minutes into the game (mostly unskippable cutscene) there's a tutorial on how to fight shit. And if you watch the tutorial, then it fucks the game up so that, ~15 minutes later when you're in a story battle, instead of what's supposed to happen (a few rounds in, the foe-who-totally-isn't-Etna hits you with a "You lose the fight" spell and the story continues), the fight just keeps going with a really high-level foe who will beat you and then it's game over.

And the stupid [EDITED] did no playtesting, so didn't pick up that bug that was obvious enough (if you play the game, you'll probably encounter it because all you have to do is decide you want to know the ins and outs of combat). And never released a patch.

Halo could get that award, simply because it created a really annoying fanbase. So could Smash Bros. for that matter, and I suppose this is meant to be games that you hate for themselves, not for their fans.

Oh, FF8 got my rage on in a major way.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:18 am

Koumei wrote: Oh, FF8 got my rage on in a major way.

Oh. I forgot about that one... Spamming the draw command got old quickly.

Stupid fucking FF8...

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:30 am

I ranted about FF8 earlier in this thread if you want to see that.

I really wanted to give this game a chance, too, and I enjoyed it at first. It's just that the game got really stupid around the Edea Assassination point and never really recovered. Then the Garden battle was over and the game went from stupid to boring and really stupid.

I still maintain that FF8 has the worst ending quality-to-quantity ratio of any videogame I've played. A 'Squall and friends save the day' screen would've insulted my intelligence less.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 8:01 am

I haven't yet had a game I truly hated.

However, I don't like FF12 because it is the only Final Fantasy game I have played that failed to raise the least of my interest in the characters.

Even the generic clan members on Tactics Advance had me mentally assigning personalities based on their performance in battle. (One Bangaa who mained Dragoon and kept scoring critical hits, on some occasions on two people lined up when he was using a spear, ended up with me thinking of a face-breaking badass.)

But the FF12 equipment/customization system just doesn't do it for me. I have no reason to care about who's in the party, and I'll probably have to restart the game if I ever want to make the effort to beat it.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 8:58 am

*slaps myself* How could I forget the epitome of everything I hate about Time Travel stories? Fuck I hate FF8. I could close my eyes and consider the draw system just another form of inane grinding, but the story coup'd the entire thing for me. However considering how much of a fan I am of Tactics I'd have to say that Tactic's Advanced and its fucking stoopid Law system along with a shitty story draws my rage if only because Lion's War set my expectations high and I walked into the Advanced version only to have those same hopes crushed.

rapa-nui · Post by **rapa-nui** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 9:36 am

Dragon Age Origins is ace. I'm playing it on hard and it doesn't disappoint. It's not perfect, but then what is?

Main gripes involve:
- no mooks... like literally every encounter can quickly turn lethal.
- Revenants are unbalanced. There's a random Revenant that's substantially harder than the boss it is supposed to be protecting.
- Some people have griped that Rogues are underpowered and mages too powerful... there may be truth to that, although my rogue has a pretty high DPM, although lower DPS than mages. The game still feels balanced though because mages are extremely fragile.
- the game looks a tad dated... if you want eye candy, go back to Mass Effect.
- inventory system is meh

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 9:45 am

PhoneLobster wrote:Probably World Of Warcraft.

Simply for being a game so bad it frequently inconveniences me even though I don't even play it.

This.

World of Warcraft is boring and shitty. I don't like playing it, I don't like watching it, and I don't like hearing about it.

-Username17

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 5:19 pm

Has anyone tried out the Dragon Age toolset? I liked the tools in Neverwinter Nights 1, but loathed the ones in NWN2. Since the toolset is one of the primary draws for me, I'd like to know how user-friendly and versatile it is.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:03 pm

Sadly, the best handling of any time-travelling story I've ever seen was Chrono Trigger and that's only because you couldn't go to a specific point in time; you could only reach dates relative to where you were. For example, you didn't go back to Guardia: September 29, 1000 AD, the Proto Dome to Guardia portal took you back exactly 1300 years and vice-versa.

TOZ · Post by **TOZ** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:03 pm

You know, I was going to say WoW, but thought that was just a silly console/tabletop elitist flaw of mine.

Glad to see I'm not alone. I really don't want to think of the many times someone has bored me to death with their raids and alts.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:45 pm

I personally really do not like WoW or any MMORPGs; one addiction nearly caused my roommate back in NPS to drop out (and later did when he was back on the fleet) and I have had several people who did play tabletop games or online freeform now permanently engulfed in those messes.

However I can't really work up the bile to hate those games. I can understand people liking games like WoW, FF8 and the like.

The only video game that I personally can't accept liking is you-know-what. Saying that you like that game after you've played the first one is that you like kicking over peoples' sand castles and then building whatever you want on top of it.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Tue Nov 17, 2009 11:13 pm

WoW is a fun single-player game that you unfortunately have to play with other people who may or may not want to have fun with you. And it is designed by devs who think the most fun is had when you're waiting in line or stabbing your fellow man.

-Crissa

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 1:16 am

Chrono Cross sucked pretty hard. Cosmic Race for the PS1 was execrable. WoW would be much better if they focused exclusively on 5 man content instead of forcing you to party with 10 or 25 people to bonk someone on the head.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:46 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote: The only video game that I personally can't accept liking is you-know-what.

I don't think I do. What is it?