Dexterryu

He seems to fail to realize that while all of those franchises are good games, that they are all basically the same game of open world, climb tower, clear camp, find zone boss, repeat, repeat, repeat games. Sure, they all have good graphics and solid gameplay mechanics but when you're doing the same damn thing over and over to pad out your game length that people burn out on them.

On 10/19/2019 at 12:33 AM, XxEvil AshxX said:

 

What I find interesting is that Metal Gear Solid: Phantom Pain had an even simpler and more basic gameplay loop (and equally bullshit story) and it had every gaming journo on the internet dangling from Kojima's nuts like a tire swing. I played MGSV from start to finish and I still don't understand the praise.

 

I took down my first Behemoth tonight playing solo. Those things are not to be taken lightly. 

 

My main 'con' when compared to Wildlands was that Wildlands spoiled me with the drone options. I keep waiting for my explosive and emp drones but so far they're MIA.

The main difference is 2015 vs 2019. The gameplay loop has been done to death by this point. I played and enjoyed Wildlands, but by the end of it I was ready for it to be over... That any of the reviews said Breakpoint is similar made me less interested until/if I feel that itch to try it again.

On 10/23/2019 at 12:20 AM, XxEvil AshxX said:

 

I think one of the reasons this game got trashed in the reviews was because everyone was racing to get through it by the time the embargo lifted. Its really not the way to play this game.

 

For example; Angry Joe, whose opinion i usually share, bitched about having to fly everywhere and that it was boring. Yet he only played with Del and OJ and they were just flying around everywhere and not collecting intel. If he wouldve been collecting the intel, he wouldve had campsites unlocked all over the map and he wouldnt have had to fly everywhere. I wanted to reach through the screen and shake him.

 

Same was with the IGN review. The guy described how he was playing the game basically going straight from objective to objective and i thought to myself "man if i was playing like that i'd hate the game too."

This is one of the things that I'm really mixed on. I liked the idea of collecting intel in Wildlands and enjoyed it until the first time or two until it became a tedious exercise. For this to be much more interesting is that they needed to add some context to the intel so it wasn't just a generic series of animations and dialogue of "oh here's your next clue" or "the guy your looking for likes to hang out here" and the result being a new waypoint on your map. Give me some good clues and let me connect the dots myself vs leading me by the nose to the next fight. Maybe give me some intel to influence my tactical decisions on what loadout to bring to the fight? Just something beyond "go here next".

9 hours ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

 

Here's the thing, Yves...

 

Ghost Recon doesn't have a devout fanbase anymore. You made sure of that shit years ago. Every single Ghost Recon game you've released has been dramatically different. Where games like Far Cry and Assassin's Creed remained distinctly Far Cry and Assassin's Creed for long enough to gain a dedicated fanbase, Ghost Recon gets torn apart and rebuilt for every fucking iteration.  Even Splinter Cell, with it's ups and downs, still felt like Splinter Cell.

 

Ghost Recon has been a military sim (Ghost Recon), a tactical shooter (Ghost Recon 2 & Summit Strike), a Black Hawk Down action movie (Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1 & 2), a corridor shoot 'em up (Ghost Recon Future Soldier) a season of Narcos (Wildlands) and now a game that... doesn't really feel like any of those.
 

I've been a fan of Ghost Recon since waaay back in 2002. But that doesn't mean you've made it easy. This series has been all over the map for almost two decades now, and now with Breakpoint you make yet more design changes and expect everyone to just hop on board? The Ghost Recon name does not carry the weight that Assassin's Creed or even Far Cry does.

 

The one thing Ghost Recon needs is consistency. And you've never, ever provided that for the series.

 

It's a shame, because I do like Breakpoint, for what it is, and I am actually enjoying it. But even I can tell that your developers wanted to make the game a hardcore experience, but someone wouldn't let them. There are so many systems in place that aren't utilized. The fatigue and canteen system is completely pointless, as is the food buff system. I just don't need them. There are essences of a "survival" game here that got shit-canned in exchange for a live service model. And that sucks.

 

And why the fuck can't I base jump????

 

I also completely agree here. I'd love for it to really go back to it's roots. It was a great mix of being very tactical while also being accessible. I love my RPGs but tactical shooters is not where those gameplay concepts belong. I'm glad the CEO is starting to realize that gamers want more than different skins of the same game of open world/climb towers/clear bases/find "clues" to next bad guy/level up to get skills. AC, Far Cry, Division, Ghost Recon, Watch Dogs.

I have a feeling that they have a model for Single player (franchises above) and multiplayer model that is similar(Rainbow 6 / For Honor). Would it surprise anyone if Skull and Bones felt like a pirate version of Rainbow/For Honor?

I understand that people feel a bit burned, but if you're really following this game and also trying out the updates you can see a few things.

1) It's definitely a real game

2) They are pushing boundaries like crazy if multiple areas

  2a) The boundaries need pushed.

3) Unless you bought expensive ships, by the time the game releases you'll definitely be getting $60 worth of content. You already are if you're interested in game development at all.

I'd consider double dipping for RD Online, which I have no idea if it's good or not. Not sure if I'd play through the SP again or not.

1 hour ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

Is this as bad as the alarmists on the internet are saying? Buggy? Boring? Etc?

 

You can omit the MTX element, because i never buy any of that shit anyway.

 

I thought the demo was okay, but I cant really judge from my enjoyment of that because i always have a hard time getting into betas when i know i'll have to do everything over again. I just don't know if the gameplay loop will hold up.

 

Brandon Tyrell's review in progress basically outlined his rinse-and-repeat loop and it seems pretty Ubisoft.

 

The thing that makes me curious is that ALL Ubi's games have that loop, and games that were critically praised like AC Odyssey STILL only break down into that one simple loop.

 

If anything I can see Breakpoint being Odyssey but without some of the personality and Kassandra's upskirts.

 

I dont know where i'm going with this. 

I'm kinda in the same boat... I liked Wildlands even though it's still a gross bastardization of the Ghost Recon IP. That said, I can't get myself excited about this at all (or the Ubi Loop) right now. I guess I'll just kinda need to be in the mood for it and see it on sale at some point in the future.

It's not that I dislike the games at all, it's just that I feel like I've been there/done that too many times at this point.

I've played a fair amount of it on PC. It's a really cool concept and I had fun playing it but it also didn't really hook me. Some of the controls I found a bit frustrating, but they also fit the game really well (different atmospheres affect movement differently).

Like others have said, it's Groundhogs day with a quest log that maintains it's memories. So as you go along and are at different places at different times you get more info on the story and what's going on. 

4 hours ago, Bloodporne said:

Just got a 4K/HDR TV finally and looking at a list of games with best Pro enhancements etc., I'm thinking of giving Horizon a shot. Some questions since I'm generally not into open world games from what I've tried. 

 

How "open world Ubi formula" is this game on scale of 1 to 10? Is the combat engaging and good? Just how big is it? 

I'd put it on a 6 on the Ubi formula. There aren't nearly as many "towers" to climb or bases to clear.

Personally I'd say it's almost a mix of Witcher 3 and something Ubi-ish. I really liked the back story of the world and exploring the ruins... they all had good story components to them and finding out what happened was why was done well.

Some of the bosses toward the end were a little too tanky/spungy but they were doable.

As for your concerns...

1) I don't remember the HUD much. I do think you can turn it off.

2) Crafting, outside of amo wasn't really too heavy and largely optional. Could also be done on the fly during combat if that tells you how light it is.

3) The main story and world lore were really interesting... which is where it's open world feels great vs the typical Ubi jungle island.

4) The combat is solid, particularly vs the robot dinos. Fighting other people was pretty standard fare, not great but not bad either.

6 hours ago, Bloodporne said:

I'm with you on that 100%. The map design, fast travel (or lack of) options, sparse save spots all ended up being a recipe for pure frustration for me and I absolutely love Metroidvanias. I'm very methodical with these games, taking notes and everything and even I found it too obnoxious about 70% in and just dropped it. I'd say I played about 35 hours total and the last 15 of those felt like the definition of a slog. 

 

There is so much to love about that game and I wanted it to fantastic but those issues above make it grating as hell. 

Same for me on Hollow Knight. Tried really hard to like it but it just didn't click. Sundered & Ori and the Blind Forest are great options if you're looking for that sort of game.

It's also still one of the (if not THE) originators of the modern FPS with regenerating health model. Not that health regenerated but the shield did. Prior to that, it was all a % of health and the only way to get back up was to get a health pack. The model allowed for both the player and the enemies(elites) to be spungy when necessary while also very weak without the shield. It was  one of the first person shooters to adopt a checkpoint system vs save anywhere(which has damn near disappeared). It also has solid enemy AI even by todays standards.

So one of the reasons Halo:CE stands up so well is that pioneered many of the mechanics that modern shooters still employ.

On 7/3/2019 at 1:17 PM, Spork3245 said:

 

The launch Xbone’s gpu is equivalent to roughly a GTX 750 or a HD 7790, the launch PS4’s is roughly equivalent to a GTX 760 or an HD 7850. That would be a long ways off from a 1080 equivalent next fall.

Yep... and I hope it's more along the lines of a 2080 personally. The point I'm trying to make is that both 1080 and 2080 can both produce some damn good graphics if set as the absolute minimum baseline. As in, the games we're seeing now are mostly developed to achieve 1080p / 30fps on a GTX750/760 since the base Xbox One and PS4 are the base specs all developers have to optimize for. So even if it only ends up being ~= to a 1080 that's still a huge jump.

This is the reality of almost any large corporation. There are almost always conflicts of interests across many levels:

1) Do we invest in the company/employees or maximize profits

2) Do we try something new or bank on existing performers

3) You have people that genuinely care about their work and products vs those that are ladder climbers.

4) There is almost always a conflict of voice between the ladder climbers & those that want to make the product.

5) You have the 80/20 rule... 80% of the people working don't care and just do the minimum/half ass and 20% who bust ass and do 80% of the work.

These are all things that tend to infest large companies in addition to often large egos of certain creative types. The thing is, for us as gamers and direct consumers of their products you can often see these conflicts come through in what they make because we're basically playing through many of the decisions they made. Compare that to hardware products where they might just not be as performant in a given iteration.

Naturally, there are exceptions. Sometimes leaders listen to the passionate voices vs the ladder climbers. Sometimes a company gets to enjoy a transformative leader that has the passion of a fan (at the moment, Phil Spencer comes to mind with how he turned around Xbox One and putting Xbox games on PC).

On 7/1/2019 at 6:31 PM, AbsolutSurgen said:

PlayStation 5 APU To Offer Better Performance Than NVIDIA’s GTX 1080 – Rumor

 

A rumour going the other way, which is comparing the PS5 to a 1080 -- which only has ~8 GFLOP of power.  I had expected something closer to the 12-14 range.

Current gen at release in 2013 was ~ equivalent to the previous gen nvidia x80 GPU. So this seems about right. Even though it's a little dated it's still a lot of power to give devs as an across the board standard to optimize to.

32 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

What the hell are you talking about? Obviously a wishlist on a specific storefront is going to limit its options to that storefront, but EGS doesn't even have that.

You were commenting on a previous post of mine where I said I maintain my own wishlist... (http://www.cheapshark.com/ & https://camelcamelcamel.com/) in reference to maintaining my own list for games that I want to purchase at sale price-points. Yes, steam has this feature and I do use it. But I also maintain my own that covers all platforms in one place so having another vendor isn't really a big deal.

On 6/28/2019 at 6:07 PM, Xbob42 said:

It's a good thing you're willing to put them on a list you maintain yourself, as EGS also doesn't have a wishlist.

On 6/28/2019 at 6:08 PM, Firewithin said:

 

So I must have missed that feature of Steam where it lets me maintain a list of PS4 / Switch exclusive games....

14 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

Hmm, based on your very first sentence, it sounds like you already have reason to dislike the EGS.

If you dislike the price of an EGS exclusive, you don't get them from a place that has a better price, you sit on Epic's middle finger and open that wallet like a bitch.

I may look at games & prices a little differently than most people. When I see previews/reviews of a game I sort of decide if I want the game at all and how much I'd pay for it. The vast majority of the time I won't play full price regardless of platform or store. So I put them on a wishlist or on a list I maintain myself (which covers PS4/Xbox stuff too) and I wait until they are the price I'd want.

16 hours ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

As has been said repeatedly in other threads, Epic offers no features. Their store doesn't even have a shopping cart. People who have been on Steam for years appreciate the robust stable of features like achievements, big picture mode, cloud saving, user reviews, community forums, the list goes on and on. Why be forced into using a service that has no features at all?

Another area or group of areas that I really don't care that much about. I definitely think they're valid for those that do but I'm just not one of them. To me, steam is a store, a downloader, and a friends list. Due to poorly policed review bombs, I don't put a lot of stock in steams user reviews. So I go to reddit for those (and forums). Again, not saying these things aren't valuable features just not something that I use much so they don't sway me in where I decide to purchase games. 

All things being equal I default to buying on steam unless there is a vendor that benefits the developer most. So when CDPR releases a game I want I get it on GOG.

I like steam, but if they don't have the best price or the games I want I just get them from the place that does. 

I don't understand why people are so upset about a store that anyone can use having exclusive rights to sell a game is a big deal. The games are the same either way.

Purchased about 20 on sale VR games for my Index (that I won't have for a while yet). Here's the list... For those with Headset's what are other on sale must haves:

Purchased:

In Death

Elven Assassin

Audioshield

Pirate Trainer

Gunclob

Arizona Sunshine

Superhot

Runesage

Form

Raw Data

Ocean Rift

BoxVR

Gorn.

My bet is that he just sees the transition happening to more streamed gamed occurring over this next generation. Once that happens hardware becomes fairly moot.

4 hours ago, legend said:

Oh I'm "interested." I'm just deeply skeptical it will work well enough.

 

 

 

 

It's not quite the same. People were were resistant to change when it came to video streaming and people were also unsure how they felt a bout a business model in which they didn't own anything. 

 

In this case, the issue isn't resistance to change or concerns about the business model. People are excited by the prospect as evidenced by this very poll! It's concerns about whether the technology is up to the task of the dream they're selling.

 

 

Satellite is high latency; it's not a good solution to this problem. The best bet is many more distributed data centers. One in every city might be good enough.

 

 

I agree! The dream of game streaming sounds pretty awesome to me if they can get it to work well.

I don't think you're looking at all the facts and technology progress. For instance, I agree with the sentiment of people owning something but also early on it was the same... people wanted "dvd" quality at the time and didn't think streaming could deliver it. As we all know a little time and technology progress and now it far exceeds it. Now most people prefer it. The same will likely be true of game streaming. Physical media for films (non-compressed 4k blu ray) is still the best, but for most people streaming 4k60hz content off of youtube is damn near indistinguishable.

As for satelites, you're a little off the mark here. Current satellite technology does in fact introduce a lot of lag. That's because of the distance of the satellite orbit (very high) and the fact that your backhaul is back down and across wires. The Starlink and OneWeb satelites are going to be much lower orbit and use laser connections between them as their backbone/backhaul. This is actually testing out to be faster than fiber: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/11/spacex-low-latency-starlink-satellite-network-will-be-massively-profitable.html

With the majority of hosting moving to massive AWS / Azure / GCP datacenters scattered across the world latency is going to drop significantly due to the combination of data gravity (data being on extremely fast SSD arrays near directly attached to storage) and laser based satellite backbones. The stuff that clouds can deliver are already outperforming almost anything you can build in a datacenter. It only gets faster once you move client processing (aka streaming) to be hosted along with the server processing.

People preferred DVDs and disks for TV and movies until Netflix streaming took over. The same will happen with games. In several years when practically the whole globe will be covered in low orbit high speed/low latency satellite internet much of the lag, bandwidth, and availability will be solved. 

I love putting together my own top end PC rig but just streaming whatever I want, whenever I want and always playing at max settings is going to be damn nice. No patching, no compatibility, no closed networks or exclusives. Just subscribe to the games/devs etc... that you want and you can play. All of these are good things.

On 6/7/2019 at 11:41 AM, Greatoneshere said:

 

I would seriously look into PC/Steam indie games. A lot more narrative-driven and adult oriented in my experience. 

That's actually most of what I play these days. Definitely PC first outside of the AAA PS4 titles.

11 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

I get that the time loop aspect is supposed to make you explore efficiently or whatever, but it seems just... really annoying?

Efficiency really isn't part of it... it's that there are events that happen in the loop that have nothing to do with you and therefore occur at exactly the same time every loop. So it's not having a 22 minute time limit but more about picking up clues(which are kept in a loop-resistant log) that lead you where & when to be at a particular place. When you figure them out, it's very rewarding.

You can get to the farthest planet within about a minute. So there is plenty of time to get anywhere if you know where & when to be there.

If you like exploration,  mystery, and some problem/puzzle solving this game is really good.

On 6/7/2019 at 10:46 PM, Anzo said:

I own a Tesla. 

 

I would expect Cuphead to run better on more recent Teslas  with the 2nd gen MCU than mine, which is first gen. Hey, if they can get it smooth then all the better! 

Me too.  Performance Model 3 with the latest auto pilot HW. 

52 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

I'm hoping to high heaven they do another survival mode. That was my favorite mode in the first game.

Mine too. It was just the right mix of survival... no dying of thirst/hunger in 10 minutes but tons of incentive to scavenge. Most encounters completely manageable but deadly if you made a mistake.