Xbob42

Can I get a summary of the updates? I feel like it might be spoilery, and I'm still really early in the game. I only played it for about 45 minutes when it came out, before I was bombarded with higher priority games, but I quite enjoyed it.

I also enjoyed Dark Souls 2, along with every other Dark Souls title. Whatever it is that makes people hate Dark Souls 2, I guess it's just not in my brain? I mean some folks point to shitty hitboxes but goddamn I could make a compilation video of the shitty hitboxes in every FromSoft game. I happily beat DS2 multiple times.

On 4/8/2024 at 8:17 PM, legend said:

Tonight I took another crack a the mindflayer combat simulator now that I knew I had to kill the flayer first.

 

That was indeed a fucker. I was doing okay managing my teammates to keep them from fighting the scrubs but I'm pretty sure the mind flayer's AoE attacks would kill them or something because their health would go from nearly full to "where the fuck did they go"  

 

Finally got him using the sleep strategy on the scrubs to keep them away and going all out to build synergy attacks as fast as possible and unloading tifa to kill him in the first stagger.

Just poking my head in this thread. If anyone's still yet to do this or having trouble... remember, you don't need to take 3 party members. You can solo it, or do what I did and take a single fighter + Aerith and just have her chain sleep the little guys while you single-target the big dude. Trying to micromanage two party members just makes it way more complicated and headache-inducing than it needs to be!

5 minutes ago, stepee said:

Counterpoint: This isn’t real and is actually a microchip created by Bill Gates to infect us all with the woke mind virus 

Sign me up for two then, please!

Boy I could go into what makes Yooka-Laylee worse than Banjo all day!

Hell, I made a way-too-long Youtube comment about it in reply to a video defending the game 6 years ago, that fucking inexplicably enough just got a reply today. Obviously it's replying to a specific video but you can see there's a lot more than just "no soul."

Quote

As for your questions at the end:

 

"What is a collect-a-thon with a minimap?"

 

I think this is true enough. But there's a reason people wanted a mini-map: You get lost, in a bad way. Not lost as in "oh boy I'm exploring this level," lost as in "Oh boy, I have like 3 quills left and have no idea where they are. and also this map is 3 square miles" I believe Stop Skeletons From Fighting actually covered this really well in his video. He called quills "low-tier collectibles meant as breadcrumbs to subtly guide you to new parts of a level, but also to make it evident where you've already explored." Hiding them actually completely destroys their purpose.

 

 "What is a collect-a-thon without elements of Metroidvania?"

 

Getting new powers is fun! Getting new powers, then having to backtrack to a hot tub just to swim under it for 2 seconds to open a cage is tedious. Doing that should've triggered the hot tub to open a trap door or something and have you do a challenge using the power you came back with. This is actually often a problem in Metroidvania titles too. Using my powers as a key to unlock a further reward is boring. Using my powers to unlock a challenge involving said powers and THEN earning my reward is way more effective.

 

"What is a collect-a-thon without variety?"

 

What? Who complained about the game having variety? Maybe I zoned out during part of the video.

 

"What is a collect-a-thon without a sense of space?"

 

A... sense of space? I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. But if I'm right, I think that not having that sense of "space" was what disappointed a lot of people. The levels feel large and aimless and boring. It wasn't out at the time you made this video, but just explore any Mario Odyssey level and then try to explore a stage in this game. Mario Odyssey is packed to the gills with secrets, enemies, way better variety, everything feels very intentionally placed. From any point in a stage you can look around and likely see something you haven't explored yet. Yooka-Laylee just feels... big? I like exploring big 3D platformer stages, but I think there's something subtle that developers themselves can forget sometimes. I noticed the same thing with the big first open level in A Hat In Time. It just feels aimless and meandering, same as Yooka-Laylee, its smaller, more focused levels feel much better. But it's not because I hate open levels, because exploring Mario Odyssey's big stages was a joy.

 

"What is a collect-a-thon with a focus on... combat?"

 

Is this meant to excuse the poor combat in Yooka-Laylee? Look, if you don't want a combat focus, that's fine. Just don't add a bunch of enemies. But no one's going to complain if the combat is fun unless it takes over the whole game. If it's included and also bad (like in Yooka-Laylee) then that's a problem. It's not the worst in the world, but it just contributes to the general sense of slowness.

 

Also I think that final focus on the game being a collect-a-thon after telling people they can ignore objectives they don't like was really tone deaf. People buy these games because they like 100%ing things. You really want to limit the amount of C-tier stuff you pack into a collect-a-thon because it's going to be seen by a lot more people than a C-tier quest in an action game or MMO or something. It's a case where it's actually worse than nothing, because it drags down the whole experience without adding anything except padding.

 

As a JRPG fan, I totally get where you're coming from on reviewers decrying a genre you like (or any genre, really) as a relic of the past. It's short-sighted, absolutely. But I don't think any of that excuses Yooka's failings. If you loved it, that's great. But I think trying to downplay these issues as "part of the genre" is actually just as bad as what these reviewers are doing. Because the developers will think that we're okay with that. I'm not okay with bad combat. I'm not okay with missing the point of low-tier collectibles as breadcrumbs. I'm not okay with confusing stages that I dislike so much that I don't even bother learning them. That's another thing: If I liked them, I'd have learned them much faster. But if you find the simple act of getting around a map to be an annoyance, then it doesn't matter how well you know it. You still don't want to be there.

Video in question: 

Obviously I neither expect you to fully read some random ass comment I wrote from over half a decade ago or watch the video, just there for posterity. Noticing I wasn't very clear in a few parts, whoops! Well I ain't going back and editing shit!

But yeah, obviously if critics are seeing something wrong, well... smoke, fire, all that. But I feel like it shouldn't be too hard. Like Jason Schreier I feel wrapped up his thoughts pretty succinctly:

Quote

I finished Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes a few days ago and am sad to report that it's a messy, disjointed game, with tedious activities and a disappointing story. Plus: a critical bug prevented me from recruiting one of the characters and seeing the true ending, and as of right now it still isn't fixed. 

 

In many ways Eiyuden captures the Suikoden feeling, from the rousing pre-intro cinematic to the castle that grows as you play, but it's missing the emotional core that made those games (especially 2 and 5) great. The three protagonists have no personality and the grand political plot turns out to be tropey anime nonsense. And it's so janky. I really wanted to love this one, but alas.

Obviously lacking in some minutiae since it's a Tweet, but his broader points are easy to understand and relate to, I think.

Honestly, it made me want to play through the original series more, to see if I agree or disagree. For example: Will I agree that there's a strong emotional core to the original games? Will I agree that they don't evolve into tropey anime nonsense, which I feel like 99% of JRPGs do? It'll be fun to find out!

Alright, let's get everyone vaccinated globally against a certain type of virus, and then a few years later just fucking bombard the atmosphere with 20,000 strains of that virus to kill off the morons.

Did it go into more detail than "no soul"? I feel like that's shorthand for "I shouldn't be reviewing games." In casual conversation, sure, but "no soul" is such a vague, overarching generalization it really doesn't mean anything.

Harsh? I mean, some definitely were, but it's sitting at a 78, which is... honestly where most RPGs I play sit, if not lower.

I'm actually running through the Suikoden games first. I had played and beaten Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising before this and based on how people talked about it, I expected it to be a grindy dumpster fire, but I found it to be a fairly short, overall pleasant little "make the numbers go up" action game with RPG elements. There was definitely a lot of back and forth fetch quest stuff, but almost all of it would let you collect the required items or whatever before even getting the quest, so I'd just go to town and have like 20 quests to turn in and have enough to upgrade the town, get new shops, spells, etc. Was a nice mellow game in my opinion.

Got about 30 minutes into this, and just suddenly told myself "I should really play the Suikoden series first," so I've got 1-5 loaded up on my Steam Deck. I'll go through them as long as I'm entertained. I have Tierkris on my DS< which I did actually play upon release and enjoyed it. Dunno if there's any others, but looking forward to playing through all of them, been on a real RPG binge the last couple of years, clearing up huge amounts of my backlog and classics I never got to try before.

Honestly, this is a spiritual sequel Kickstarter to a series that's been dead for almost 2 decades, I'm not expecting it to be incredible, I don't even know if I like Suikoden as a series yet! But I do find all of this interesting, and will be happy to play through it as part of the bigger overall narrative behind the series.

4 hours ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

Man I hope I can get into people's garages and piss on their boxes.

I've been doing this for a while. If the side of their garage has any tall bushes, you can just hide behind one and wait for them to go to work, then kind of rotate around it as they pull out and slip in before the garage door closes.

4 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

The podcast hosts claim that there were no "water cooler conversation" games released in 2023 and that the last game to do so was Elden Ring in 2022.

 

This is a really odd claim to make for a year in which Baldur's Gate III released and permeated the overall cultural zeitgeist in a way that Elden Ring never even came remotely close to cracking.

Real "anything I'm not playing doesn't exist" vibes.

The only good thing any Borderland fan has ever done. Bravo!

I can't wait! Seems like what I wanted out of Stray, which in the end wasn't about being a cat at all.

Wonder how my stats would look to this data. Brand new AAA single player game one week, 25 year old JRPG the next, then a 24 year old online RPG followed by it's 3-12 year old sequel (depending on how you look at it) followed by a hardcore survival horror RPG maker game, a fairly new procgen indie detective game, a 7 year old imsim, and 350 separate hentai games.

1 hour ago, best3444 said:

Yea I read this article the other day. I cannot fathom the sheer pain he must have felt when his wife sliced off his dick. Jfc. 

Probably just thought he was getting a little morning head, those women can be toothy AM I RIGHT FELLAS

3 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

I gotta agree. I played other Saga games, and the demo for this was egregiously awful on every single level.

 

thankfully I still have a bunch of good RPG’s to complete, like Star Ocean’s most recent remake, the Grandia HD collection, and hopefully Eiyuden Chronicles Hundred Heroes if it’s good (I love Suikoden 1,2, and 3 as well if I remember correctly, it’s been a very long time).

 

i know it’s just a demo, but I don’t know how I could ever recommend this game to anyone. My short experience was just awful. 

And they think it's worth $50! I wouldn't take it if they paid ME $50! Someone might see it in my library!

Me after beating Starfield

41 minutes ago, GameDadGrant said:

Tell us how you really feel.

I deleted the line where I said that anyone who likes this game should probably be on a terrorist watch list, which in hindsight was a mistake. They should definitely be on that list.

Not to any great extent, no. And if they're anything like this I'd rather take up stamp collecting than ever play another game this bad. 

I tried the demo for this and it was probably the worst gaming experience I've ever had. A completely and utterly incomprehensible "narrative," literal clipart for world map stuff, voice acting so abysmal it'd make Chaos Wars jealous, combat that's super zoomed in so you can never actually read what's going on, even when attacking enemies. Just a total clusterfuck of garbage on every level, with a godawful mobile UI to boot. What a huge piece of shit.

Every single one of these fucking Youtube videos has 10 times the polish and total budget of the game itself. The fucking thumbnails have more effort than the entirety of the plot.

59 minutes ago, stepee said:

cdkeys has this for $40 so that’s close enough to give this one a go after Horizon! @Xbob42 u still playing? I booted up the beginning and I can feel the LA Noire vibes, especially the music.

Haven't had a chance to really get into it yet. Currently playing this crazy indie horror-ish game, Withering Rooms, which is bizarre and fun as hell.

The small team was probably exploring new career ideas as they were laid off.

12 hours ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

Boy do I know it! Look, I absolutely love the idea of the hybrid or remote work models, but I can anecdotally tell you that this approach has directly impacted productivity at my place of work. I've seen critical paths grow by 25-30% on my last 2 projects. Its infuriating, because I personally love the idea of remote collaboration, but my reality doesn't put it in a good light. I type this from my desk in my office where there use to be roughly 60 people and now there are 8 people here on average. 

I think part of the issue is that people aren't actually trained (or not trained effectively) in how to be productive while working remotely. Learning some best practices for setting up a proper work space in your home (Or Starbucks or whatever, I dunno where you fuckin hippies work) can help a lot, as well as minimizing family distractions. You're always gonna have some people in unstable situations at their homes for whatever reason, but I don't think the solution is a big expensive office building to force everyone to be miserable so the few weirdos who "like" going into an office are happy. Perhaps a better solution would be a company laptop and getting your ass to a quiet place like a library or the park or working in your parked car like a creepy weirdo.

92

3 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

 

Yeah and video game companies are notorious for not being petty and dealing silly retaliatory action over perceived slights.  

I don't think Grubb gives a shit about early access to FUT 2025. Also, anyone who does this kind of reporting just gets their copies of games (which is pretty much the only "retaliation" any publisher can realistically enact) from someone else in the industry.

18 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

Wonder if it was worth it for Grubb on this one. True or not it’s not like the most vital piece of info to throw out there and now he’s done gone and poked the bear. I guess he still pry has his source regardless so maybe he doesn’t care. 

It's a rumor about an unreleased video game, not a fucking war secret.