Re: General Games Discussion

by Nishankly Sat Jan 16, 2021 2:20 am

Need GL among us content as we get rich

by Harmonica Sat Jan 16, 2021 9:33 am

Fallout - The Frontier, a new lands mod bigger than the original New Vegas finally released, after 8 years of development. One of the largest mods ever created for any game. You can now play the same char through New California -> FO3 + New Vegas <-> Frontier in the New Vegas engine in the same play through. Ain't modding great?

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/68009

Spoiler:

by Harmonica Sat Jan 16, 2021 3:50 pm

When Fallout - The Frontier has better driving mechanic than CP77. Laughing

https://youtu.be/wcr8cDwuM7I?t=140

by Pedram Mon Jan 18, 2021 6:58 pm

@Tomwin Lannister

by M99 Sat Jan 23, 2021 4:29 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btFclZUXpzA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Udnu2LBPdRc

by Harmonica Sat Jan 23, 2021 4:40 pm

Nice feature of what is wrong in todays games.

by Lord Spencer Tue Jan 26, 2021 7:33 am

#A64

Game: Thousand Arms.
Year: 1998, 1999.
Genre: RPG Datin-Sim.
Publisher: Atlus.
Developer: Red Company, Atlus.

General Games Discussion - Page 39 Thousand_Arms

General Games Discussion - Page 39 Thousand_Arms

Many PS1 RPGs with heavy Anime aesthetics had dating sim elements in the game. Yet, very few of them were ever localized west. Thousand Arms, which was published by Atlus, is one of few such games that was ported West.

Honestly, if this is the best of the genre, then we haven't missed much. After all, Thousand Arms is a thoroughly mediocre game even without its dating sim elements, and those make it an even worse game.

"The Holy Flame of the Sacred Torch is the power of Light, the only power that can battle the Darkness"

The story in Thousand Arms begins with Meis, the main protagonist, fleeing from his home as the powerful Dark Acolytes conquer his home. Soon, as a special "Spirit Blacksmith" can wield the power of the light, he finds himself facing these foes to save the world from darkness.

Accompanying him in his journey is a motley crew of JRPG archetypes, and many of them are girls that he can date.

Being a game with dating sim elements, Meis is a horny teenager who tries to flirt with every female character in the game, and eight or so girls oblige him with dates. Ideally, you would expect these dates to reveal some character growth between Meis and any of the girls he dates (including some who are actual party members). Yet, these "dates" are only a series of random questions (that aren't unique to each girl" with obvious correct answers. They are boring, useless, and offer little value. Except, they are actually required if you need to use your "Spirit Blacksmith" power to upgrade your weapons.

The emptiness of these dates extent to the boring story itself. While it tries to be a "funny" JRPG, the humor doesn't land often and is a poor excuse for having a predictable plot and boring characters.

However, it is worth noting that the game has extensive voice acting, which is actually mostly good and works to disguise the vapidity of the game's plot.

"Even more important than my land... is my property... Errr, my people! It's my duty to protect my people"

Normally, a good gameplay system will allow me to power through a mediocre story. No such luck here. True, this is not a terrible battle system, but it can get very slow by design.

While you have three members in the party, each battle is a one-on-one affair. Only the front member of each team can attack each other, while the background characters provide passive support and encouragement. In battle, you choose the actions of the front character and the back characters and execute the action manually once an activity gauge fills for each line.

As you can imagine, battles can drag on for quite a while. Also, this means that you don't get the most out of all of your party, and only use one of them at a time. Even their background activities are lacking in impact, as most spells and skills can only be used in the front.

Sure, some abilities allow you to target all enemies at once, but that costs resources that end up wasting as much time to recuperate.

Overall, it is a unique and interesting battle system that simply wastes too much time in every regular battle, doesn't fully utilize all of your party, and doesn't make use of much of your abilities.

"The happier the girl, the stronger her elemental power"

Outside of battles, the other major gameplay system is the cringy dates you go to. Unfortunately, these dates are of significant importance to the game even if you don't find any intrinsic value in them at all.

As you date girls and raise their "intimacy" levels, you can forge more powerful spells into your weapons.

Other than having these multiple-choice answer dates, you can also engage in a different mini-game with each girl, and these are mostly fun, but they make it easier to raise the intimacy level instead of raising it by themselves.

Ironically, as I progressed through the game, I realized that many skills are useless, and as such dating can be a double waste of time. However, the strongest skills are still locked at the highest intimacy levels, so there is no way out of these empty cringe-filled scenes.

"All I wanted was to make a powerful sword. Is this a reflection of my desire? A raging evil?"

Visually, this is a sprite-heavy game that uses a unique and expressive style that didn't wane with the effect of age. The closest game to its visual style is Guardian Heroes on the Sega Saturn

Outside of battle, the sprites are chibi-sized, expressive, and look different from any other game I played. In battles, characters and enemies face each other like in a 2D fighting game, and they look really good, even if some people may not appreciate the exaggerated looks. Especially the enemies, which feature some punk-rock kind of style.

Also, given the importance of the dating sim elements, there are frequent instances when the characters take to each other in full Anime-styled panel-scenes. These showcase a completely different design aesthetic than the exaggerated looks you see in the rest of the game, conforming fully to 90s Anime sensibilities.

Musically, the game's soundtrack is acceptable. While it has some great tracks, I mostly found it to be forgettable and unremarkable.

Weirdly, the voice acting, despite having some awkward or hammy moments, is actually pretty good. This probably was some of the best voice acting in a localized JRPG at the time.

In Conclusion:

Thousand Arms is a mediocre game both as an RPG and a Dating Sim. It has interesting gameplay ideas that are hampered by the awkwardness and slowness of their execution, and it has no interesting story or characters to successfully craft an interesting Dating Sim element in the game.

In fact, all it succeeds in doing is wasting some perfectly good design ideas and voice acting in a game that excels at practically nothing. It isn't fun to battle when battles take too long, the story isn't that good, and sure as hell it isn't fun to have dates in.

Final: 5/10

Pros:

The forging mechanic is interesting.
Unique and stylistic graphical presentation that didn't dull with age.
The story is sometimes funny.

Cons:

The dating mechanics is a boring waste of time.
Almost all characters are boring archetypes with no semblance of personality.
The combat, while unique and interesting, is criminally slow by design.
Neither story nor characters are interesting enough to power through the game.
This game has one of the worst protagonists I have ever seen.

"Tips"
1-To upgrade weapons, forge them as the girl level up.
2-To gain spells from forging, forge when the intimacy levels of any girl increase.
3-To get all spells, make sure to forge at all intimacy levels because you don't get the back skills (for example, if you increase intimacy from 3 to 5, forging will not give you the spells of the 4th level).
4-Succeeding at dates means you should lie to the girls and not reveal how much of a jerk your character is really is.
5-You can only forge weapons up to your current "Charisma" level, so don't let intimacy outpace charisma.

"Next Game"

I was willing to ignore or tolerate the boring and idiotic dating scenes in the game, after all, I made it clear that I am actively turned-off by dating sim elements in most games. However, I wasn't willing to ignore the slow and boring gameplay, along with a weak and unremarkable story. As such, I really didn't enjoy Thousand Arms, even if I didn't butcher its score (because it still has some fun and funny elements).

The next game in my addendum PS1 review list is a cult Survival Horror game, Clock Tower, which has two games on the PS1. Here is hoping it is better than Alone in the Dark, although I suspect the first game in the series will seriously show its age.

Stay Tuned

by rincon Tue Jan 26, 2021 12:01 pm

Firenze wrote:
RealGunner wrote:Does anyone here play as consistently anymore? feels like gaming is going through its worse phase or is it just me?

2020 was the most I've gamed since 2017 tbh

Same, probably since even before that too. Gamed like I was back in high school with all these lockdowns.

Witcher 1 and 2, Age of Empires 2 remastered online with friends, FFX, VI, and now IX, Horizon, Cyberpunk, and probably other I'm forgetting.

by BarrileteCosmico Tue Jan 26, 2021 12:08 pm

rincon wrote:
Firenze wrote:
RealGunner wrote:Does anyone here play as consistently anymore? feels like gaming is going through its worse phase or is it just me?

2020 was the most I've gamed since 2017 tbh

Same, probably since even before that too. Gamed like I was back in high school with all these lockdowns.

Witcher 1 and 2, Age of Empires 2 remastered online with friends, FFX, VI, and now IX, Horizon, Cyberpunk, and probably other I'm forgetting.

This is how I know Rincon is a certified south american Proud

by Myesyats Tue Jan 26, 2021 12:40 pm

BarrileteCosmico wrote:
rincon wrote:
Firenze wrote:

2020 was the most I've gamed since 2017 tbh

Same, probably since even before that too. Gamed like I was back in high school with all these lockdowns.

Witcher 1 and 2, Age of Empires 2 remastered online with friends, FFX, VI, and now IX, Horizon, Cyberpunk, and probably other I'm forgetting.

This is how I know Rincon is a certified south american

You guys play europa universalis too? Very Happy

by Great Leader Sprucenuce Wed Jan 27, 2021 7:54 pm

Control is on PS+ this month, if you haven't played it yet you should.

by LeVersacci Wed Jan 27, 2021 8:01 pm

Creator of Alan Wake? Might check it out.

Only bought 360 for Alan Woke lol

by Pedram Wed Jan 27, 2021 8:21 pm

Hate to disappoint you @LeVersacci but as someone who played both, Control is like the total opposite of Alan Wake.

Alan Wake had a somewhat repetitive gameplay but the actual story was engaging enough for you to ignore the shortcomings in other areas and keep playing it. Control however is actually fun to play but the story is just plain nonsense.

by Great Leader Sprucenuce Thu Jan 28, 2021 1:25 am

Not really lol.

by Lord Spencer Thu Jan 28, 2021 10:23 am

#A63(S)

Game: Clock Tower.
Year: 1996, 1997.
Genre: Adventure Horror.
Publisher: ASCII Entertainment, Human Entertainment.
Developer: Human Entertainment.

General Games Discussion - Page 39 14351-clock-tower-playstation-front-cover

One common mistake used when discussing the Clock Tower series is to claim that it is a derivative of the Resident Evil games, which is false both from a chronological and gameplay perspective. This series actually started on the SNES, and it plays nothing like Capcom's marquee franchise. For starters, this is an Adventure-Horror game with point-and-click gameplay.

However, it is true that the first game on the PS1 owes much of its success to the interest in Survival Horror games that was generated by the first Resident Evil. I can't imagine many of those who punted on the looks and feel of this game were left satisfied.

"The giant scissors once again search for prey. A trail of horror stretches across Europe, from Norway to England"

Nominally, the story is a continuation of the events of the first SNES game. In that game, an orphan girl, Jennifer, survived the brutal attacks of an almost supernatural murderer. This Jason-inspired murderer uses giants Scissors as a murder weapon and is therefore dubbed Scissorman.

In this game, you get to choose to follow the story of either Jennifer or her guardian, Helen, as they stumble into yet another Scissorman murder spree and try to survive it or to destroy him. Based on how you progress through the game, the items you find, and the clues you gather, there is one of five endings available for each character, of which only one is unquestionably good.

While the set-up is unoriginal, there is no excuse for the weak story and dialogue at play here. Generally, you expect some seriously good dialogue and exposition in any decent point-and-click game, but we get little of that here. This is made even more obvious by the inconsistent use of voice acting, which is available in some scenes only despite the entirety of the game's dialogue barely being 5 pages long. Naturally, this doesn't allow any of the game's characters to be properly developed at all.

What is worse for me is the lack of any interesting lore or background documents you can sink into, something that should be standard in any decent Horror game. While the opening cinematic and exposition dialogue hints at an interesting backstory for Scissorman, none of that is explored with any rigor in the actual game.

"Who will make it through this game of murder alive?"

There are two parts to Clock Tower's point-and-click gameplay mechanics. First, there is the tried and true area navigation and clicking on everything to get info and items. Here, you are expected to read the clues provided by the game to know where to go next and how to use the items you gather. Unfortunately, with such a blurry environment, it becomes very easy to miss vital points which may require you to backtrack for a long time or miss the best endings.

The poor pointer is more critical in the second part of the gameplay. In both random and set-points, Scissorman bursts into the scene and you go into escape mode. Here, you either run and find a hiding space (which Scissorman my uncover and kill you) or find a one-use weapon in the environment to knock him out for a bit. Of course, this can get difficult if your eyes can't distinguish the details in the environment. Still, these sections are usually the best thing the game has to offer.

Being an early 3D point-and-click game, Clock Tower was clearly at a technical disadvantage since interactions are barely noticeable in an early muddy 3D environment. This, coupled with an honestly unresponsive pointer meant that playing the game was frustrating most of the time.

Thankfully, the game is mercifully short. In fact, there are only three scenarios, with only the third one providing any semblance of complexity (or atmosphere). I guess that encourages replaying the game to get the better endings (since you also unlock hints along the way).

"What in the #@%! is going on? We haven't even solved the last case yet and now another mass murderer?"

This is the first game made by Human Entertainment that utilizes 3D graphics, and it shows. You can even compare it to the 3D images made by the same studio later and you will see a massive difference (check out the fight scenes in Vanguard Bandits).

As such, the poor character design and animation can be excused and is even somewhat charming in its own historical way. In fact, there are some effective jump-scare moments that manage to land despite the ugly graphics. Unfortunately, the gameplay, which depends on clear visual cues, suffers because of this.

One time, I accidentally clicked on a wall while Scissorman was chasing me, and lo and behold, I clicked on a crowbar I used to bash him on the head. I had no idea there was a crowbar there and couldn't identify it when I loaded until I squinted for two minutes at some black spot.

As for the game's audio, the voice acting is competent but is not always present. And the music is mostly atmospheric but with a catchy and interesting main theme.

The best use of audio is reserved for Scissorman, whose theme plays just before he burst into the scene (during the random moments not the scripted ones), and then he starts chasing you while clanging his giant metal scissors. That clanking sound informs you how much time is left until the bursts into the room and is a constant and welcome source of tension.

In Conclusion:

Clock Tower is a game that doesn't have a good story, isn't very fun to play, and offers little in terms of production design. I struggle to come up with a reason why anyone would want to play this game nevermind actually enjoying it.

Yet, for kids especially kids playing together, I imagine them having a blast whenever Scissorman bursts into the scene and having a laugh when they fail to evade him. As an adult, I a not having a blast repeating the last 15 minutes because I couldn't see the thing I was supposed to click half of the time and randomly dying the other half.

Final: 3/10

Pros:

The main music theme is alright.
Running away from Scissorman can be tense at times.

Cons:

The story and dialogue are sparsely provided.
The gameplay is boring and uninteresting.
Puzzles require a punishing adherence to a sequence.
For a point-and-click game, the game's pointer is severely lacking.
The muddy graphics doesn't help to differentiate from what is an actual point of interest.

"Tips"
1-Click on everything with an activity mark to get info and items.
2-Some items you get early on are necessary to get the best endings in the last scenario.
3-You need to remember where you send the statue at the beginning of the game.
4-There are two protagonists, Helen and Jennifer. To choose Helen, speak to Harris only one time the first time you see him in the prologue. Otherwise, speak to him twice to choose Jennifer.

"Next Game"

I remember my cousins telling me that Clock Tower was an interesting and "REALLY SCARY" game when I was young. Right now, I disagree on both counts. However, they may have been speaking about Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within, which I am supposed to review next.

If I find Clock Tower II to be as bad as the first game, then I will skip reviewing it, and you can consider this review to cover both games. If that happens, then I will love directly to game #62 in the addendum list, Saiyuki.

Stay Tuned

by LeVersacci Tue Feb 02, 2021 12:45 pm

Pedram wrote:Hate to disappoint you @LeVersacci but as someone who played both, Control is like the total opposite of Alan Wake.

Alan Wake had a somewhat repetitive gameplay but the actual story was engaging enough for you to ignore the shortcomings in other areas and keep playing it. Control however is actually fun to play but the story is just plain nonsense.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:Not really lol.

Was planning to play it next month or so but saw they released a PS5 version with 60 fps and the controller features. Will start on it today.

by Arquitecto Tue Feb 02, 2021 5:56 pm

Mole! I just saw it and have been intrigued since I'm a fan of Sam Lake and what he does with games.

I hope it doesnt disappoint as the gameplay looks repetitive but downloading it as we speak.

by Harmonica Tue Feb 09, 2021 9:26 pm

CDPR got hacked, and source for CP77 and W3 stolen. Happy days. cheers

General Games Discussion - Page 39 KocBa03

by BarrileteCosmico Thu Feb 11, 2021 3:38 pm

Man imagine using that kind of language in 2020. Cringe.

by Thimmy Thu Feb 11, 2021 10:49 pm

BarrileteCosmico wrote:Man imagine using that kind of language in 2020. Cringe.

Did you expect more from someone who's capable of hacking CDPR? Whoever it was, probably hasn't left their basement since 2005. Maybe it's Leroy Jenkins hmm

by Great Leader Sprucenuce Wed Feb 17, 2021 2:01 pm

Mafia 1 remake.

Story, sense of time and place, characters etc is all fantastic.

I especially like how the world is basically a back drop for the story instead of forcing you to do things which the game isn't designed for.

Main criticisms would be that the controls (within combat, travelling on foot and driving is fine) and combat doesn't feel great, which is a shame as it's one of the strengths of Mafia 3.

If they are making another Mafia game i would like to see improvements to the combat while keeping the world more of a backdrop to the story instead of trying to be another GTA and failing.

by Arquitecto Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:07 pm

I began to hate pretty much all open world games a long time ago for a reason.

The worst thing they can do is compete against R* who they will NEVER top. They defined it and have too much money and research and time not to be the best. It'll never happen.

Deviating from that and creating one's own brand of open world I am sure is the solution devs are going for these days.

That being said the remake seems to be well received and respected so happy to hear that.

by RealGunner Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:20 pm

Has anyone here tried outer wilds? I know it's indie but the game sounds really good.

by M99 Thu Feb 18, 2021 10:30 pm

RealGunner wrote:Has anyone here tried outer wilds? I know it's indie but the game sounds really good.

I played it. Its fantastic. Hard to get into but once you get into it you'll see its one of the best and unique gaming experiences you can ever have.

by RealGunner Tue Feb 23, 2021 5:15 pm

So...days gone coming to PC

Wonder what's with this new stance from sony on porting exclusives to PC? Can't be purely money?

Maybe they are going for more friendlier terms with MS?

by Harmonica Tue Feb 23, 2021 5:35 pm

There was statement like year ago, they're looking bigger player base. So yes, moneyh. Everything any public company does, is based on money, only private companies can have other motives.

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