The "What Are You Playing Today" Thread

[Brian]

Don't have a 360.  Also, I already own it. :|


Played it a bit, and I admit I'm in a bad mind-state to enjoy it because I'm ticked off at the hype and the EA stupidity.  Still, not _quite_ finished with the tutorial, my takeaway thus far:


Very typical EA 'could have been _awesome_, but is okay'.  The tutorial is annoyingly overbearing; I hope if I go for later playthroughs the entire thing is skippable.  The combat system is somewhat interesting, but just as you can combo-stagger a foe with hit to finish your chain, they can do the same to you.  Locking down your enemies is fun; mistiming something and having to watch 3-4 seconds of being chain-comboed yourself is arguably 'fair' but not fun.  I'm playing a game to control my character, not be punished by watching continual hit-reacts until I get control back.

The game gives both skills and talent trees, and unfortunately, you can unlock things in the talent trees during the tutorial that you cannot mechanically benefit from until after completing the tutorial.  The tutorial itself, which is really all I've gone through ... painfully, painfully linear.  It's so linear I physically cringed away from the screen.  I know it's just a tutorial, but it's jarring in the extreme when you're ready to play and the game just stops:

"You've got new armor!  Hit 'esc' to access the menu and equip it!"

And everything is frozen until you do this.  If you're going to take me out of the game, just take me to a skippable cutscene showing me how to do it and let me make my own character decisions, damn it!

"You've unlocked magic!  Use it.  NOW."
"That's not my character concept, really...."
"Then you don't get to leave this room in the tutorial."

*sigh*

"Daggers!  Now sneak up and backstab that guy!"
"Screw it; if I don't, I'll never get out of the tutorial.  Sword-junior is okay for sword-guy, I guess."
*sneak up on one guy, tutorial message forces me to break stealth before the next*
"Really, game?  Really?"
"Yeah, really. :D"

Moving on.

"Now you have a magic stick.  Use it!"
"I'm sword-guy, stop shoving magic down my throat."
"Then you can never clear these cobwebs and finish the tutorial."

Okay, maybe that last is being really irritable on my part -- but it also lets me know this is going to be a standard for progression through the game.  Always going to need something with fire to pass cobwebs, and I don't know that I'll get fiery sword options, so my sword-guy is already almost never actually using a sword.  Anyway.

"Now that you've almost finished the tutorial, face a boss!"
"Alright, this isn't so bad.  Whittle him down and--  WTF is this?  You put me on a rail for the entire thing, then spring some mechanic on me entirely unexplained?"
"<trollface.jpg>"

It doesn't matter that the results of the mechanic are explained later, and in that instance it has no bearing on the gameplay -- they even fail at being consistent!  If you're going to force me onto a freaking rail, why drop the ball there?

Alright.  So -- after that, the tutorial's not done, but you're allowed to explore.  Which lets you get into (among other things) a small starter-dungeon, without the ability to use the next mechanic (fate).  This is just design for the tutorial/starting area; they're pissing me off with this mostly because outside of the fact that if you let an enemy hit you, you don't get to play until their animations are finished, it looks like it could be a really fun game.

Gonna go all Drac on this game in summary so far:  U DESIGNIN' ... POOR.


Moving on to the other elements.  The art style has been labeled as like 'Fable'.  I only played the first game of that series (and only the first version; evidently there were more than one), so I don't know about that.  I can say it looks an awful lot like a slightly smoother version of WoW--   To the point that one of the villages shown in the opening movie looks like a carbon-copy of Redridge, just with a bridge at the west end, as well.  Not offensive, and maybe in some ways a bit prettier -- but also unremarkable for all of that.  Pretty, inoffensive ... probably the graphics are about the most positive I can say so far.

I'll keep playing because I believe there's going to be a good game beyond this awful presentation that makes me indifferent to the plot.  There'd better be, at least.

[Dracos]

I bought Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, since everyone was saying it was so awesome, not just the two big shills at Penny Arcade.

After purchasing the game through Steam, I was treated to needing to authenticate with EA (while connected to Steam) in order to play it.

I suppose, not 'what are you playing' as much as 'what offended you too much to play it'.

Huh.  I haven't gotten that yet but it sounded really cool and I wanted it.  Annoying to hear that they are being dicks about it.

[Brian]

Having a love-hate relationship with this game.  I truly am.  The gameplay gets a bit better, after clearing the wastes of tutoria, the game does pick up.

...and then EA decides that they are going to e-mail me marketing bullshit even though I specifically opted out.

* Brian rages.

"Join our communities!"  "Like us on Facebook!"  "Sign up to our e-mail list!"

And at the bottom:

"This is a transactional message which has been sent to you by EA.
If you have opted out of marketing communications this will be the only email you receive."

So, what, 'transactional message' is the legalese to sidestep marketing spam?  When I opt out, I fully expect that I am _opted the fuck out_.  A total lack of 'click here to unsubscribe' or even the freaking intelligence to _declare_ that I am opted out, making me wonder if they signed me up for crap anyway....

EA, you're making it really hard for me to like your games.

[Jon]

Yes, it is. Basically, if they can make an argument that the email is about something you already bought from them, they get to send it to you anyway.

Sucks.

[Brian]

Yeah, I sent a scathing e-mail to their marketing and PR addresses.

I won't be buying anything from EA again.

[Grahf]

Brian: That sounds incredibly annoying on so many levels.

I know that this is a what did you play today thread, but I think I'll post something that a lot of people -- myself probably included -- will be playing in the future.

Apparently Double Fine are going to be working on a new point and click adventure game, and decided to get funding from said game from Kickstarter. They started with the goal of $400,000 which would cover both the game and a documentary that would entail the making of said game.

It's been less than 24 hours, and they've already raised...

Spoiler: ShowHide

ONE MILLION DOLLARS

Or to be precise $1,169,017 dollars. They've utterly shattered the previous records for both highest funding and fastest funding on Kickstarter, and there's still over a month left to donate.

For anyone interested about learning more about the project, this is the link.

[Dracos]

Crowd-funding is definitely going to be a rising area for Cult-favorites that don't nominally sell reasonably well.  It's good to see.  But at the same time, it's just a supplement at best to traditional forms of funding for large projects like games or movies.  It's really not uncommon for more money to be needed during the project than initially estimated.

HUm.

Anyhow, Sleepy me is playing Mana Khemia.  I'm at Orientation there.

[Jason_Miao]

This is pretty much why I don't buy EA games.  Not won't, but just don't.  Pretty much, every time I've decided that maybe THIS EA game will be worth getting, despite all the crap they pull, they turn it up a notch, and I pretty much don't want to deal with it.


Anyway, if you think they're over the line: http://www.fcc.gov/guides/spam-unwanted-text-messages-and-email

"The CAN-SPAM Act defines commercial messages as those for which the primary purpose is to advertise or promote a commercial product or service."

Good news: The FCC does enforce this law.  Bad news: Last I heard (admittedly, this was in 2006, so maybe it's different now), the FCC anti-spam division is seriously understaffed and enforcement is via government

[Brian]

I've been playing Amalur further.  I still think EA sucks, but the game itself gets better after the shaky start.  I guess every RPG needs to have a crafting system these days, too....

Well, they've taken random factors out of the crafting, at least as far as blacksmithing goes, which is nice, and left it in the salvage option.  Not perfect, but scummable, if you really need a specific elemental hilt, or the rivets, or whatever.  I do admit, there is something nice about getting elemental weapons pretty much constantly, but at the same time, once you get the fiery sword, well ... what more do you need?

Warriors getting spells was kind of weird, but they're not abrasive; quake is actually pretty nice.  Comes across as almost Exalted, since you stomp and make explosions.  The fate mechanic is kind of interesting in theory, but in practice boils down to optimized exp-farming.

I think I can suggest getting this game for a console, but not PC.

[Merc]

New indie bundle that might interest people: http://groupees.com/bemine

The site is pretty slow, it was actually meant to be up on valentine's day but it crashed almost instantly then. Crashed again on wednesday and -finally- went up yesterday, though as mentioned, site can be slow.

[Brian]

Just finished Uncharted.

For a really supposedly 'epic' game, I was underwhelmed by the combat.  It didn't tend to be 'fun,' and it was yet another 'cover simulator' style of shooter.  Problem being ... I've played much, much better cover simulators.  I could be a bit hard on it just because it's a bit older, by now -- so I may be comparing it against games that came out much later....  But I'm preeeeetty sure Gears of War came out before Uncharted, and Uncharted's CS wasn't as good as GoW's.

Other than that, the game is pretty much an interactive (and very long) cheesy summer 'blockbuster.'  You know, the kind the studios churn out that's never going to win any awards or make a persistent memory, but draws in tons of cash, despite the absurdity (nay, even stupidity!) of the plot?  It's one of those.

I found the story to be about the second most enjoyable part.  The most enjoyable part was the graphics, which tended to really be top-notch.  Was very impressed with the visuals -- for a game that predated Tomb Raider: Underworld (a comparison I must make, as I am tragically very, very familiar with TR:U), it feels that the graphics are better.

So ... yeah, the combat really sucked, though.  Instead of being really interesting, they pretty much just use gimmicks like mobs spawning behind you while you're in cover, or ahead of you when you're not in cover.  They'll spawn in places you can't see, but logically, if you think about it ... those guys would have to be chilling, while you shoot their buddies around them, just biding their time.  (And I know they spawned, because you can't peg their spawns with grenades -- well, you can, but it doesn't kill an idle guy -- they just show up and step out of cover when it's bad-luck-time for you.)

A lot of the combats broke down into (for me) very dreary tedious retry-after-retry, just waiting to get the combo of good luck and decent cover to take out the waves upon waves of enemy attackers.  I think in TR:U, you end up killing maybe a total of 60 people throughout the entire plot.  In Uncharted, the total is a lot closer to 600.  Okay, TR:U also has you killing metric tons of spiders and other critters -- Uncharted uses the non-zombie post-Apocalypse chart.

(For those of you that don't know, in a post-Apocalyptic survival game, if you dismiss zombies/mutants, your encounter chart is about 95% 'asshole with gun.')

The game does a lot of things that TR:U does, with a lot less emphasis on trying to be awesome about it.  Where TR:U slowed time down when you had to react to some given 'panic' event (or whatever they called them), Uncharted doesn't -- but it does give you a QTE (Quick Time Event) minigame and button-prompt.  I actually kind of like Uncharted's way of doing it better.  TR:U gives you 'time slows down a bit -- figure out what to do.  Uncharted gives you 'press this button to not die.'  Not that either of them are the most epic examples of gameplay, but anyway.

Back to the combat and why it sucks.  Everyone you fight pretty much has a gun.  And you also have melee options.  If you use your super-melee ability and do a 'brutal combo' (square, triangle, sqare), you get a nice showy murder sequence, and they drop double-ammo.

Since you can't use this while other people are alive, I'm not clear on what the function of this combat option is.  Killing the last guy alive?  Because if he's got buddies, they'll be shooting you to death while you're locked into your showy execution animations.  Assuming you pull it off -- because if you shake the controller, sneeze, or blink too hard, there's a chance that your murder sequence just won't work.  Which means you'll pretty much be sticking with the cover simulator style of killing enemies unless you don't have a choice.

There are also grenades, but they have an interestingly small explosive radius.  It seems to be a bit under 5 feet.

I could go on about how much I hate the combat in the game, but instead, I'll say ... the final combat was just ... awful.  Heavy cover simulation, enemies immune to headshots (you just knock their helmet off with the first bullet to the face), disintegrating cover, limited ammo, and then to top that all off when you're done....

...the final battle is a QTE.  Really.

Weak.

At least the story was interesting, and I liked the option to look at the various treasures I looted and get a 3D model of them to inspect.

Moving on--  The game also has puzzle aspects, which I found entertaining, if not particularly hard to figure out.  The really hard part was the platforming/DICE.  And ... TR:U beats Uncharted there.  Lara doesn't walk off cliffs, and has 'smart' jumping.  Nate could really have benefited from that.  I also have to give TR:U points over Uncharted for more clearly defined markup.  I may be biased from six months of testing TR:U, but generally you could look at something and know it was climeable.

I have no idea how many times I died in Uncharted because something looked grabbable ... and wasn't.


Anyway.  Bottom line, the game is alright, gameplay wise, and fun, in a campy/cheesy action-movie way.  I'd suggest only playing on 'easy,' -- not because the game is too hard, but because the combat's just not that great.

I got this in a bundle for 29.99 with the sequel -- hopefully they've improved their 'cover simulation' angle a bit when I take a crack at that.

[Brian]

Uncharted 2:

Do not spend money on this game.  It is not worth it.

Find a video of someone else playing it and sit back and enjoy.  An interesting concept that improves on some elements of the game preceding it, then decides, "We need to make combat harder."  Not better, harder.  Hammering this point home -- they give you some new weapon options over the previous game, but don't expect them to do any good.

I just finished a level where I shot soldiers in the face with a grenade launcher -- on normal difficulty -- and they did not die.  It takes two headshots with a grenade launcher to down these super soldiers.  Okay, whatever, at least the game can be fun outside of the combat, right?

Nope.

The very next enemy encounter is against some stupidly powerful superboss thing (actually, judging by how it was introduced, this is the game's next mook unit, and they just make a showy 'boss' fight out of the first one to arrive), and to hammer home how 'tough' the game is, you can't actually win the fight.  You have to do well enough for someone else to save you, but you'll (if you're like me) die about 12 times and even vainly lower the difficulty to 'very easy' because you're sick of all this crappy combat interfering with what can be a fun game, when it's not about tiresome gun-battles.

This is where you'll find out that lowering the difficulty doesn't improve your survivability, or let you ignore the combat.  It does make that supermook take less damage before someone else saves you, but by that point you'll have noticed that even on normal difficulty, while you have 'limited' ammo, it keeps replenishing your supply.

That's right -- the enemy takes so many bullets, they hacked in a fix to keep your ammo up.  I'm not sure where the idea of having fun went, but it certainly wasn't going through 8-10 reload animations while also trying to not get killed, all trying to down one stupid event-boss.

I might be able to overlook the annoying new enemy unit and that poorly (incredibly poorly!) designed encounter if combat itself didn't devolve into such a chore.  The game really does have fun moments, and some good dialog (in the cheesy sense), but it's buried under some really just un-fun and lousy design elements.  Early in the game there's a stealth mission (and you know stealth missions are always going to be fun in games that aren't completely about stealth) that's not exactly punishing, but does tend to not give you enough clues, resulting in many failures and retries.  After that, the first enemies you encounter are as tough as the very end-game enemies from the previous game -- and headshots are both harder to pull off and just not as effective.

The graphics remain solid, amazingly so.  The puzzles are generally fun.  If you enjoy cheesy action movies, again, the story can be enjoyable, too.

But I cannot fathom anyone actually finding the combat fun, instead of only having (sadly rare) fun moments -- from fighting the annoyingly tough 'miniboss' enemy on a train that takes literally multiple clips of autofire weapons to the face to down, to mooks that are evidently protected by forcefields--  Someone on their design team evidently thought that the enemies in the previous game were 'too soft' and boy, did they ever fix that.

This game is not worth any amount of money at all.  I can't even suggest buying the 'Uncharted 1+2 bundle' from Greatest Hits (which is how I got it).  Mostly, I'm just wondering how this game got the reputation it did ... because it's not very good.  I'd much rather watch a cheesy movie with gun combat -- or remove combat from their game entirely to enjoy the puzzles, DICE elements, and story.  Suddenly, I really have no complaints at all about TR:U's combat being trivially easy in comparison.

*sigh*

Now to see what awaits me now that an NPC has saved me from the supermook.

[Brian]

Okay -- finished Uncharted 2.  I was right about the supermook.  They become a common enemy, and weaker in later encounters (boo).  I bought the 'unlimited ammo' and 'one shot kill' tweaks so that I can make Drac play the game and see if that makes the experience more fun (my expectation is that yes, it will).


On to inFamous 2!  ...oh, it won't let me load the saves I made on my old PS3.  That sucks.  And it gives you bonuses and cool stuff if you played the original?  But I can't benefit and save-hacking failed me?  Yeah, trophy protection.  Boo to that!

So, back to the original inFamous.  ...forgot how much fun this was!  I also did so well in tutoria the game said, "We're promoting you to 'HARD' difficulty!"  While flattered, I realized that much of the difficulty came from reduced EXP gain, so set it back to 'Medium'.  Yeah, inFamous is actually a pretty fun game.  Story's a bit 'meh,' but the gameplay carries it forward anyway.  So enjoying that again.

[Dracos]

*nods*  Definitely a fun game.

Been alternating between BvS, Mana Khemia, and Saint's Row 3.  Saint's Row 3 has been awesome.  Not entirely unqualified awesome, but generally the game is fun and encourages/rewards being an asshole.

"So I'm gonna steal all their shit."
"They know you will.  Won't they try and kill you?"
"Yeah, prolly.  So you gonna watch my ass, right?"
"Shit yeah, dude.  I got rocket launcher.  Let's go."

*Follows flying after the guy in a helicopter with a rocket launcher, blasting up parts of the city*

I was just wandering around this morning and I found a tank.  Just sitting there.  I got in.  Score challenge on blowing the crap out of things.

[Merc]

BvS?