Video Games

[hyzmarca]

I also am going to dispute the pokemon thing.

My brother opened his very first pack and got a Shiny Charizard or whatever, that was worth more than any other card at the time. It did not sell for and never would sell for $1000.

It wasn't a Japanese pack, was it? I distinctly remember people asking more than $1000 for a mint Japanese Charizard. Whether than actually got it I do not know.

[Koumei]

And? I could ask for a million dollars for an empty coffee cup here, that doesn't mean that's what people are paying for it.

I just wish the game didn't glitch out on me so much.

Twice now it's caused me a blue screen, and my achievement for clearing the Story Mode with all characters hasn't shown up on my Steam.

As someone who doesn't like the achievement system all games are required (by law) to have, let me just say: ha ha ha and HA!

That said, I haven't encountered any glitches yet, and... I've beaten Easy with everyone, and bumped it up to Medium. It's now at a decent difficulty for me to play at, where I need to improve but it's not just kicking my ass.

Wait, no, I've encountered one bug of sorts: in Story Mode, pressing Start on the character opens up the "choose your colour scheme" menu as normal, but you can't actually navigate through it, it remains locked on option 1. This doesn't happen in Training, Versus, Arcade etc. so for all I know that might be intended for the story.

Alternate colour schemes are kind of cool. One of them has the red skin green hair combo that makes her look like one of the devilgirls from Panty & Stocking (I can't tell you which, I haven't watched it). Ms. Fortune has one that makes her look like a short-haired Morrigan (Darkstalkers version, not the disapproving one).

[Surgo]

All this talk of card games has me wanting to play that Pokemon TCG gameboy game again. They need to remake that for a modern system that doesn't require a save battery (I'm pretty sure mine has died by now).

[Ed]

What's weird is that every publisher seemed to have decided to go for 5 million simultaneously.

I don't think that's that weird. They're all publicly traded companies that are sensitive to PR and investor confidence. Even if your expenses are low enough that a mere 3m sales would do you just fine, you see the next guy saying "well, I can pull down 5m!", you look worse. Even if he's not going to pull down 5m in anything but his wildest dreams.

It's all a farce, anyway. I mean, let's get real here: Square-Enix did not lose money on Tomb Raider. They made slightly less of a spectacular profit than they wished upon a star for. If any of these companies were pushing serious innovation and actually risking the profits of their cash cows on new and experimental stuff, I'd probably be more sympathetic, but it's almost all bottom-line padding and trying to keep pace with their own inability to manage projects. So when they cry poor they can fuck off. (He said, while taking a break from his game with the staggering $20K budget.)

[Koumei]

Yeah, if it actually was as bad as all that, EA would have gone under by now from it's manifold failures. Sadly, that has not happened.

Also, level 93 and already doing Table Mountain stuff. Admittedly, I die rather a bit, but even despite that it's still a faster way of levelling than Mapworks, NG+ or scouring the DK for Orange-Bar Bosses.

Not really sure why trolls are "the big baddies" and very well represented in the world of bosses, but sure. I guess it's a change from the Dragons/Undead/Demons that are the big bads in most games.

[OgreBattle]

It's all a farce, anyway. I mean, let's get real here: Square-Enix did not lose money on Tomb Raider. They made slightly less of a spectacular profit than they wished upon a star for. If any of these companies were pushing serious innovation and actually risking the profits of their cash cows on new and experimental stuff, I'd probably be more sympathetic

Naw, the problem is that western devs promised too much. The narrative at the time was "Japanese games are deaaaad!". These western studios were suppose to prove that Americans prefer western games, but they've failed to do better than the Japanese studios.

Capcom has said that in the last few years they've been "focusing on western studios" but it hasn't born much fruit, now they're going back to mainly pushing their Japanese studios.

and actually risking the profits of their cash cows on new and experimental stuff

Well, that's the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. They used their flagship title to show off a new combat system that, though it has met with a lot of online criticism, it's still sold well.

If S-E 'listened to their fans' and 'played it safe' they'd be remaking FF7 right now.

[icyshadowlord]

And? I could ask for a million dollars for an empty coffee cup here, that doesn't mean that's what people are paying for it.

I just wish the game didn't glitch out on me so much.

Twice now it's caused me a blue screen, and my achievement for clearing the Story Mode with all characters hasn't shown up on my Steam.

As someone who doesn't like the achievement system all games are required (by law) to have, let me just say: ha ha ha and HA!

That said, I haven't encountered any glitches yet, and... I've beaten Easy with everyone, and bumped it up to Medium. It's now at a decent difficulty for me to play at, where I need to improve but it's not just kicking my ass.

Wait, no, I've encountered one bug of sorts: in Story Mode, pressing Start on the character opens up the "choose your colour scheme" menu as normal, but you can't actually navigate through it, it remains locked on option 1. This doesn't happen in Training, Versus, Arcade etc. so for all I know that might be intended for the story.

Alternate colour schemes are kind of cool. One of them has the red skin green hair combo that makes her look like one of the devilgirls from Panty & Stocking (I can't tell you which, I haven't watched it). Ms. Fortune has one that makes her look like a short-haired Morrigan (Darkstalkers version, not the disapproving one).

I don't care that much about the achievements, to be honest. It's the glitches that bug me.

As for the alternate color schemes, I have yet to check them out. Probably will do so once I get home from work.

[name_here]

EA, at least, has been losing extremely large amounts of money for the past several years; I took a look at their stock reports back in the spring. Activision-Blizzard has been turning a profit most years, but Blizzard was turning, I shit you not, a 47% profit when the merger happened.

[Ed]

Naw, the problem is that western devs promised too much. The narrative at the time was "Japanese games are deaaaad!". These western studios were suppose to prove that Americans prefer western games, but they've failed to do better than the Japanese studios.

I do think that's part of it. Japanese games in general (obviously not every one, but the overall trajectory of their part of the industry) are in a relatively rough spot right now, though. Phil Fish gets a lot of shit--much of it deservedly--but when he and Jon Blow ripped on Japanese games on that panel, largely lost in the furor was an uncomfortable amount of "they're right but we can't possibly admit that". For the most part it appears that some local maxima have been reached in the commercial Japanese game space and a lot of developers are loath to move from it until they have to, and areas of concern for Western developers like UI/UX seem to not be really considered anywhere near as aggressively in Japan.

Like--personally, I've enjoyed every Zeboyd JRPG they've released considerably more than any commercial JRPG I've played in the last five years. I think the retro aesthetic is somewhat lazy (and a lot of my budget for my game is going towards demonstrating that you don't need to be rolling in cash to have a good indie game that doesn't look like that), but they respect me as a player and that's big. They've cut out almost everything stupid about JRPGs both modern and older--no infinite random battles, but you can choose to start a battle any time you want; instead of "look, give two meaningless points to one character's stat" they give two meaningless points to all characters, giving you a little bump as a player without trying to subject you to a choice with no real purpose; consistent in-game payoffs that are worthy of the effort invested to get them. Also, legitimately good comedic writing, but that goes without saying. (The only other game to make me literally laugh out loud in recent memory was Saints Row 4. Which is awesome.)

I also think that Americans do prefer Western games, though. Western games named Call of Duty. Because it has the name "Call of Duty" on the box. In related news, we're all fucked.

and actually risking the profits of their cash cows on new and experimental stuff

Well, that's the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. They used their flagship title to show off a new combat system that, though it has met with a lot of online criticism, it's still sold well.

Ehhhh. I'm not sure I'd really call that "new and experimental". It's mildly different shit in essentially the same packaging. Like--there's a quantitative difference between "slap a name that will sell a hojillion copies on a derivative of prior work" and "do something new."

Don't get me wrong, that mildly different shit was remarkably underrated shit, and I enjoyed it--well, FF13 anyway, the sequel was a box of tard--but there was no real risk involved and it wasn't terribly new. I look at the indie game scene and I see a lot of really experimental (really good, too) stuff: I spent like four hours playing Papers, Please this weekend because it was amazing. What I'm not saying is "S-E should go make Papers, Please", but they're making an embarrassing amount of money off of their cash cows, I do think that they--and other major publishers--could stand to pay it forward a little bit by pushing some low-risk, medium-reward projects that don't fit on their roadmap of sequels. (EA did do this for a while, culminating last year in an "indie bundle" of games bankrolled by EA but developed by smaller, independent developers, but it appears to have stopped.)

If S-E 'listened to their fans' and 'played it safe' they'd be remaking FF7 right now.

A good point in a vacuum, but c'mon. They didn't exactly buy Eidos for new IPs. They bought it to slam out Tomb Raider and Hitman sequels 'till the cows come home. Because they work. They're putting out cynical, manipulative shit like Final Fantasy: All The Bravest, because it works too.

It's not like they shouldn't be able to do that, but it's just a fundamentally conservative business model, so I don't really shed any tears when, oh noes, they don't make as much fucking money as they would like.

EA, at least, has been losing extremely large amounts of money for the past several years; I took a look at their stock reports back in the spring. Activision-Blizzard has been turning a profit most years, but Blizzard was turning, I shit you not, a 47% profit when the merger happened.

EA posted a profit in FY12, though they lost money in FY11. They were doing a shit-ton of restructuring in '11 and really ramping up new initiatives (Origin. Oops) among other things.

I hadn't looked at Activision's numbers, but Blizzard with that sort of profit margin isn't surprising. A lot of folks seem to forget that Blizzard was still really a growth company, despite being around for a long time; hitting on World of Warcraft really rolled back their clock. Activision's a mature company with a growth ceiling.

[Shrapnel]

Also, legitimately good comedic writing, but that goes without saying. (The only other game to make me literally laugh out loud in recent memory was Saints Row 4. Which is awesome.)

On a far lighter note, this made me think of some games that made me laugh until I wept. At the top is Battle-Block Theater, which is just priceless. The gameplay is at times difficult, irritating, and monotonous, but it's all worth it to slog through the puzzles just to see the wonderfully absurd cut-scenes at the end of each level.

There's also House of the Dead: Overkill, which is what I imagine a zombie outbreak movie to look like if it were made by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.

Speaking of HoD, 2 was hilarious, although that has more to do with the terrible, terrible voice acting and poor translation. It seriously could give Megaman 8 a run for it's money.

Another that game that's so-terrible-it's-funny is Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. I know the game gets a lot of heat, but it's enjoyable to play, its plot and script is ridiculous, full of imminently quotable cheesy moments, and the many many glitches in the game only add to further the absurdity.

And, as much as I'm not a fan of the Transformers WFC games, there were a few fan-wank moments that made me laugh.

[Ed]

Continuing with lighter notes, if you haven't played Saints Row 4 you really should. It's all the shooting-everyone-while-wearing-a-hotdog-suit of SR3, but now you can jump skyscrapers. And it spends a lot of time goofing on a lot of modern games in a way that's really funny and approachable.

[Surgo]

How does it compare to Saints Row 2?

I thought Saints Row 3 was an okay game in its own right, but it was a real downgrade from 2.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, Saints Row 2 was tonally all over the place, but it was just restrained enough that the goofiest digressions could stand out from the rest of what was going on, whereas 3 was kinda like watching Gallagher fighting Carrot Top over a watermelon. When everything is that stupid I want to change the channel pretty much immediately.

Also, they didn't let you have Latino themed voice acting anymore, what's up with that? Improved character customization my ass.

[Maxus]

I played Saints Row 2 with a Latino tranvestite named Lola, who commonly spoke Thug with a Hispanic accent.

In other news, I found out GOG has the Quest for Glory anthology for ten bucks.

I have very strong views on the Quest for Glory games, and I think the world is a slightly richer place when more people play them for the first time.

Not to mention, there's that awesome-as-all-hell Quest For Glory 2 remake up for free.

[Shrapnel]

That should get Darth's ovaries going.

[Surgo]

Saints Row 2 had more than one male voice option? From the way I and my friends played it, we just used the British guy because it was by far the most hilarious.

[TarkisFlux]

I'm really enjoying the over the top nature of Saint's Row 3, and am looking forward to snagging 4 in a few months.

So for those of you who are saying 3 is a step back from 2, why for? I picked it up as part of the same bundle I got 3 in, but haven't tried it out yet. Is it more GTA 4 than SR3, it's own thing? What made it so great?

[Surgo]

First of all: Saints Row 2 had a legendarily bad PC port, from what I remember.

It's really hard to describe the difference between the games. One game critic said that in Saints Row 2, you played the straight man in an increasingly bizarre comedy -- I thought that was a pretty accurate description of the game. Aside from that though, the entire thing is just a lot more fleshed out and finished-feeling. There's more to do and the whole thing just feels a lot more complete.

It was also really, really, really funny. Not in an always over-the-top nonsense way, but everything would be going along as normal and then BAM something so bizarre and out of place it was just hilarious. You just escaped from prison and need to get peoples' respect (something "serious") then your first task for doing that is to lower neighborhood property values by driving a septic truck down the street and spraying people's houses with it. There's such a sudden and dramatic change in tone that you'd think it wouldn't work, but it's done in such a masterful way that it comes off as utterly brilliant.

One thing to keep in mind is that the difference from 2 to 3, tech wise, is not very much. The control scheme is basically unchanged, as is a lot of how the game works. It's more the difference between Pokemon Red and Yellow than it is Pokemon Red and FireRed.

A lot of it can be summed up by "production values". Saints Row 2 had some of the best production values I've ever seen in a video game, and the team that made it clearly had a lot of love for the project.

Three is by no means a bad game. But if you finish three and have a console available, I highly recommend you try out two. It's one of my favorite games of all time.

[Damocles]

OgreBattle, you make me happy, because my favorite game is Ogre Battle 64.

[Koumei]

I grabbed the 3 Dungeon Sieges as a $5 special from Steam. Didn't bother installing the first, as I played that a million years ago and it wasn't that special then. But I figured "Why not? Worst case scenario I wasted $5 and an evening".

DS2 looks pretty ugly, and isn't that interesting. 3 seems pretty good though.

[K]

Are the Dungeon Sieges any good? I'm tempted only because they are so cheap.

[name_here]

I liked DS 3 a lot. There's a couple things about it that bugged me, though.

1. The "default" protagonist dude, who the story seems to be written for because some bits are pretty weird if you're playing the others, kind of sucks. Mainly because he can only attack in melee, and a number of bosses are designed to completely screw over anyone who does that. And on the top difficulty level, you need to dodge a whole lot, which is a lot easier when you can attack at range. Also, Mr. Mad Science has a melee single-target mode, but at least he's got some ranged powers.

2. As mentioned, the story can get weird in parts if you're not playing Lucas. Most notably, people keep recognizing you as a legionnaire on sight. Now, in some cases, they presumably have your description, but in others they apparently can just tell from your gear. This is especially severe for Katrina, who looks and dresses like the mercenaries who are fighting the legion. Also, if you play the girl who is made of fire, some parts get really funky. Like the extended battle in a place getting flooded with gas that will explode at the slightest spark.

Are the Dungeon Sieges any good? I'm tempted only because they are so cheap.

The gameplay is pretty solid, in my opinion. People tell me it's a lot different from the previous two, but I never played them. It's also relatively stable and not very buggy, unusually for Obsidian. Combat is somewhat repetitive, but not dull. On the higher difficulties you always have to be on your toes, you've got two combat modes you can switch between, and a number of special abilities to spice things up. There's four characters, each of which is fairly distinct, and none of them have the same combo of melee/ranged single/group combat modes. My personal favorite is Anjali, who has single-target ranged and melee group, with a bunch of fire-themed powers. Also a fantastic reverb effect in conversations.

tl;dr: DS 3 is definitely worth 5 bucks.

I bought Saints Row 2 and 3 a long time ago in some bundle or other, and finally got around to installing 2. I can attest to the legendary shittyness of the PC port. The menus do not support a fucking mouse. I am dead serious. Left and right menu scrolling uses the left [ctrl] and [shift] keys. Only the left ones. This is even more baffling because up and down use the arrow keys.

Fortunately, the actual gameplay works pretty well, with WASD movement and mouse aim. It's also really fun to get to play something so completely over-the-top, where you soak up dozens of bullets while laying into people with a katana.

Since my personal tradition is making characters from various other media whenever I get handed a character customization system, I decided to go with Claire Stanfield. It fits quite well, although I couldn't get a taunt I was happy with.

[Koumei]

Are the Dungeon Sieges any good? I'm tempted only because they are so cheap.

DS3 is worth it, yeah. DS1 and 2 have a few issues:
1. They show their age. It's hard to play them just because everything looks kind of ugly and scratchy.

2. Instead of having classes, and taking levels in those classes, and knowing you're on-track because you're level X, you... don't. You just level up in skills ("Ranged Weapons", "Melee Weapons", "Battle Magic", "Soul/Nature Magic") by repeatedly using them. The same goes for the stats. In DS1, basically everyone started with a sword because that was a good survival move, and then they'd swap to archery or magic later on, and lower-rated skills/stats catch up really fast with the levelling. Note: it's anyone's guess if you're at the right "level" at any stage.

3. I'm spoiled by games that let you click and hold the mouse and direct people that way. This doesn't. Hell, sometimes you can't even redirect someone with another click until they actually reach the destination of the first click.

4. In DS1 at least, there are 3 good spells. You will learn them, you will spam them. That is the strategy for "playing the entire game".

Note that these don't really apply to DS3. 3 introduces specific characters rather than the generic thing, and apparently they have skill trees or something, because all the cool kids use skill trees. So the game has classes, it's just that one character has the "Is a fire god" class (people with this class: 1) and so on. So, Elothar, Half Elf Warrior of Bladereach.

3 also assumes you're using a controller because you're playing it on XBox (or just have a Logitech controller for PC). Moving and acting works perfectly well with this, and it's decent. The graphics are quite pleasing as well.

[name_here]

The keyboard and mouse controls for DS3 are all right. I went off on a rant about them way back when it came out, but they got patched to be less terrible within a month or so.

[Whipstitch]

I can't speak for the other two, but Dungeon Siege 1 was one of the more overrated games I ever had the misfortune of paying cash money for. The early game is stupid boring and it takes a while before they give you access to a merchant, so you're stuck with a couple poorly scaling spells and whatever weapons the loot gods deign to bless you with and no interesting mechanics to goof around with. So enemies take too long to die and you're encouraged to either kite things to death or stand around with your thumb up your ass while you chug health potions to get through the game diablo style. And just in case you think that former option sounds like it may be ever so slightly more interesting, I'm afraid I must inform you that most enemies are slower than the PC right out of the box and lack weird alternative movement forms or crazy projectile attacks, so it's even easier than say, old-school EQ circle kiting.