Video Games

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Tue May 19, 2009 9:57 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Oh, Jesus, Morrowind/Oblivion isn't one of those games where the enemies get stronger as you level up so the best strategy is to spin your wheels in place while trying to gain as much power without levelling as possible, is it?

Not only that, but there is a helluva lot you can do to optimize your power gain per level by delaying your level-ups. Because the game is so easily breakable, even the "scale to your level" foes on max difficulty scale are trivial and don't matter at all.

And the ideal way to optimize? Sit in a town and do the SAME ACTION over and over and over again, without sleeping or anything, until you get it to the level you want.

It's a pretty awful and retarded system.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Tue May 19, 2009 9:48 pm

Caedrus wrote: And the ideal way to optimize? Sit in a town and do the SAME ACTION over and over and over again, without sleeping or anything, until you get it to the level you want.

It's a pretty awful and retarded system.

yeah, in theory it's a cool idea, the problem is that there's no scaling to challenges. You can literally just gain max stealth skill in either oblivion/morrowind just by walking into a wall on stealth mode for an hour or so.

And the real bullshit is that bringing up your magic can sometimes only be done by cheesing the system. Try the normal way to bring up your destruction skill in Oblivion and it just won't work. The key is to make some bullshit spell that does 1 point of fatigue damage and costs 1 mana (meaning you can cast it infinitely), and then just keep spamming it until you get max destruction.

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Wed May 20, 2009 12:28 pm

The worse thing is that combat encounters still scale to your level if you've never improved your combat skills.

My Oblivion setup includes a "smooth levelling" mod that only levels you on combat skill improvement. That, however, doesn't account for the fact that you seriously don't really gain benefits from levelling more than 1 weapon skill and more than 1 armour skill.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed May 20, 2009 3:33 pm

Murtak wrote:Where Morrowind stinks though, is if you don't like to randomly wander around and explore. The world is absolutely massive and the plot hooks are scattered around liberally.

First thing you do is hack up a toggle that jacks your Running and Swimming to 200+ and keeps you from falling (otherwise you run right up a mountain and when you land you get hurt... though I think at higher levels this doesn't really matter anymore).

Cross the island in record time... after you do the second thing you need to do, which is remove the fucking pterodactyl things.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Wed May 20, 2009 6:10 pm

The Elder Scrolls 3 was silly because of the running around jumping everywhere, the conjured weapon bug, the transparent tie-dye vinyl robes, and a multitude of other issues. However, the one that bothered me most is how you have to run around looking like a zombie if you're a spellcaster.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Thu May 21, 2009 10:26 am

I only had Morrowind and Morrowind GOTY on the Xbox, but me and my brothers had hundreds of hours of play time, even without mods.

In my opinion it is much better than Oblivion or Fallout because all the locations and NPCs have brilliant character. The different towns are each actually different whereas in Oblivion they are mostly the same buildings in different layouts.

Where else can you bribe a public official by stripping for him? Or get a quest to kill a huge man eating monster with a fork? Or be given retarded quests like 'find out where the dwarves disappeared to'.

But I agree that it had huge flaws. Like the magic system being fucked. And the journal. And those flying things.

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Thu May 21, 2009 2:59 pm

"Those flying things" are Cliff Racers. I find the amount of rage that they draw rather funny, but I didn't play Morrowind all that much. I still have the disks around somewhere, perhaps I ought to install it again.

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Thu May 21, 2009 7:35 pm

Parthenon wrote:And those flying things.

LOL, Cliff Racers.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Thu May 21, 2009 9:30 pm

Thats the name. For some reason it slipped my mind.

At one point in the Bloodmoon expansion to Morrowind, my brother went in a building and freaked out because it had a stuffed Cliff Racer hanging from the ceiling: he thought it was alive and was just about to attack it.

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Thu May 21, 2009 11:13 pm

Parthenon wrote:At one point in the Bloodmoon expansion to Morrowind, my brother went in a building and freaked out because it had a stuffed Cliff Racer hanging from the ceiling: he thought it was alive and was just about to attack it.

Hah! Awesome.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Fri May 22, 2009 1:01 am

They call those things "pterodactyls" and you were in what is referred to as a "museum".

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Fri May 22, 2009 5:39 am

I did like Fable 1 for computer. The fact that you could run a brothel and be a polygamist made up for the fact it was super easy to cheat in the game to max out on all experience quickly.

Anyone play the second? (I remember hearing it was coming out a while back)

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri May 22, 2009 6:42 am

Surprisingly fun, but the main plot is... dubious. Here's an in-depth series of articles on it.

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2090
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2102
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2105
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2106
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2109
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2114

There's some articles on the first game on the site as well. I found both to be fairly entertaining reads.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri May 29, 2009 2:17 am

So I was playing the first half of the first disc of FF7 again just out of nostalgia and I realized just how suckass this game got as soon as the plot switched gears to 'chase Sephiroth'. The first part was genuinely exciting, had really strong characterization, and bucked a lot of RPG cliches at the time. Then that douchenozzle showed up and it became some stupid rehash of every idiotic 8/16-bit era jRPG plot made up until then.

The only times the game stayed interesting for me when the plot tried to make a slight detour back to the Shinra plot, but unfortunately this becomes less and less frequent as time goes on so they can abandon the initial hook of the game and focus on OMG SEFFYROFFFFFF

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Fri May 29, 2009 3:29 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:So I was playing the first half of the first disc of FF7 again just out of nostalgia and I realized just how suckass this game got as soon as the plot switched gears to 'chase Sephiroth'. The first part was genuinely exciting, had really strong characterization, and bucked a lot of RPG cliches at the time. Then that douchenozzle showed up and it became some stupid rehash of every idiotic 8/16-bit era jRPG plot made up until then.

Like Hancock did for superhero movies?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri May 29, 2009 3:44 am

I haven't seen Hancock.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Fri May 29, 2009 5:19 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:So I was playing the first half of the first disc of FF7 again just out of nostalgia and I realized just how suckass this game got as soon as the plot switched gears to 'chase Sephiroth'. The first part was genuinely exciting, had really strong characterization, and bucked a lot of RPG cliches at the time. Then that douchenozzle showed up and it became some stupid rehash of every idiotic 8/16-bit era jRPG plot made up until then.

Sephiroth - combined with the power of a bad translation - ruined FFVII.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 9:08 am

A sequel to FFIV?

Okay, now while I'm not against the idea of a sequel to FFIV in theory, the thing I'm bothered with is that Square-Enix has been doing waaaaaaaay too much motherfucking coasting lately. I mean, c'mon. We have two Crystal Chronicle spinoffs, three Kingdom Hearts spinoffs, a Chrono Trigger remake, a FFIV DS remake, two FF7 sidestories, a Final Fantasy Tactics remake, and a FF12 spinoff.

You think that's enough? How about making another fucking game? Or if it's going to be a remake/sidestory, how about something in another damn genre? Like Ehrgeiz? No, wait, they already did that. Final Fantasy Dissidia.

C'mon, man, I fucking love Final Fantasy IV as much as anyone, but innovate a little. Geez. I don't need MORE reminders that videogame culture is absolutely pathetic and can't let go of the past.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 9:36 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Square-Enix

Speaking of which. I hear on the rumor mill that a Supreme Commander 2 may be in the works.

They're talking about basically ditching the economy having persistent mook units of some kind and bringing in Square-Enix to make the mooks more characterful and bring their "brilliant story telling talent" to the universe.

That's all some scary shit I do not particularly like the sound of.

Mind you the Supreme Commander story line IS shit, but I don't see anyone curing it, especially Square-Enix.

A lot of the unpleasant sounding changes and the Square Enix tie in seem largely to be in the form of scrabbling around to find a publisher/distributor. Because like I said before, apparently PC game publishers are doing nothing but getting worse.

Also this is apparently just the first move of many that Square Enix is taking to branch out more into Western markets and game franchises to try and revitalize themselves and the Japanese game industry.

Hell maybe they will make us a new X-Com already.

Oh yeah and talking about that sort of thing. Monkey Island is back. But it's like all "episode based" or some shit. Still it's like that thing they used to say about every second star trek movie sucking or something. We are due for a good Monkey Island, and Monkey Island has always been VERY good when it's good. (and only relatively depressing when bad)

Unless you count Pirates of The Caribbean as a Monkey Island franchise release. Which I pretty much do.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 12:35 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:A sequel to FFIV?

Okay, now while I'm not against the idea of a sequel to FFIV in theory,

I hate to tell you this, but you're a bit behind there. We're up to XIII :p

(Yes, I know what you actually meant)

two FF7 sidestories

I count Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core for games, and that's being kind and not including Ehrgeiz. But what about Advent Children and... prequel animu?

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 6:39 pm

PhoneLobster wrote: Hell maybe they will make us a new X-Com already.

That'd be pretty damn sweet.

I seriously don't know why they didn't keep putting out X-Com games. X-Com Apocalypse was awesome. A great strategy game all around, and the real time combat really brought everything to life. It solved all the little annoyances of the first two games (like constantly having to equip your squad with weapons every single mission). Not that the first two weren't great games, they just had a few minor problems that needed fixing.

Then for whatever reason instead of just making another X-Com game with the Apocalypse engine, they decided to make X-Com interceptor which was a pretty boring and unremarkable space shooter.

Really the only flaw with Apocalypse was just that it was too easy. Granted I figured they wanted to make it easier than Terror from the Deep which was just a total assfucking the entire game, but they just made Apocalypse too easy, especially the later parts of the game, where you had the super armor that could take a rocket to the face with no damage. I mean, near the end it just became tedious cleanup, making the finale of Apocalypse pretty horrible. Where in Terror from the Deep you were constantly living in fear the entire game. No matter how badass you were, you were always going to get fucked up.

zeruslord · Post by **zeruslord** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 8:01 pm

PhoneLobster wrote:They're talking about basically ditching the economy having persistent mook units of some kind and bringing in Square-Enix to make the mooks more characterful and bring their "brilliant story telling talent" to the universe.

That can't be serious. It's basically removing everything about SupCom 1 and replacing it with fucking Warcraft 3 in space. The mooks are robotic death machines. They aren't supposed to be characterful, they're supposed to blow shit up. The economy and the massive scale are the only really interesting and unique things about supcom, and ditching that is going to alienate everybody who loved the original.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 8:22 pm

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
PhoneLobster wrote: Hell maybe they will make us a new X-Com already.
That'd be pretty damn sweet.

I seriously don't know why they didn't keep putting out X-Com games. X-Com Apocalypse was awesome. A great strategy game all around, and the real time combat really brought everything to life. It solved all the little annoyances of the first two games (like constantly having to equip your squad with weapons every single mission). Not that the first two weren't great games, they just had a few minor problems that needed fixing.

Then for whatever reason instead of just making another X-Com game with the Apocalypse engine, they decided to make X-Com interceptor which was a pretty boring and unremarkable space shooter.

Really the only flaw with Apocalypse was just that it was too easy. Granted I figured they wanted to make it easier than Terror from the Deep which was just a total assfucking the entire game, but they just made Apocalypse too easy, especially the later parts of the game, where you had the super armor that could take a rocket to the face with no damage. I mean, near the end it just became tedious cleanup, making the finale of Apocalypse pretty horrible. Where in Terror from the Deep you were constantly living in fear the entire game. No matter how badass you were, you were always going to get fucked up.

X-com didn't actually sell too well, i've heard. At least not compared to major franchises. That'd be why they didn't finish the new main-series games they were working on after interceptor.

Personally, i have some problems with apocolypse:
1. Whoever thought up the idea of having a massive arial firefight in a city that totally explodes when an alien weapon so much as looks at it funny, then made the group that has things covering the entire damn city that are even more collapseable than that the only one you MUST be friends with to not get royally screwed is an idiot or a sadist.
2. Brainsuckers and Poppers in turn based
3. tightly limited ammo supplies between missions. It's seriously worse than TFTD gauss weaponry for some of the top stuff.
4. Hey, did you know that stun gas is wildly more effective in turn based? Because it totally is. I suspect that it's because in turn-based damage from gas is per-move, not time-based. see point 2 for why it is a problem
5. shields own your face when they first show up in air combat. Not as much as battleships, but you don't need to shoot down a battleship to get an avenger.

Overall, though, it's a fun game. I find the battlescape to not be very hard but have trouble with cityscape.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 10:42 pm

zeruslord wrote: that is going to alienate everybody who loved the original.

Pretty much, the optimistic line is that "hey it's that guy, he won't screw it up that bad"

But two points on that...
1) One review described "that guy" himself as sounding depressed about the changes in interviews.
2) Space Siege

As for X-Com.

Actually rumors of new X-Com games have been persistent since it's collapse. The current rumors are a little more substantial, but only a little, and claim that Irrational Games in Australia is developing something X-Com using the Unreal Tournament 3 engine and not doing a very good job at keeping a lid on it.

X-Com remains one of the most famous and well loved games of it's era and beyond, and it was at least very successful for its designers and publishers, if not in comparison to the very biggest commercial successes of the era. Interceptor and Enforcer did not sell as well (I gather) but that's what happens when you try and sell a flight sim and a FPS to a turn based strategy community! (I actually liked Interceptor, but I'm led to believe the incredibly rare Enforcer was REALLY the bad end of the franchise).

But X-Com has been one of the biggest things in attempts by amateur programmers to create a computer game. Go look on source forge some day, though the only really good one is UFO Alien Invasion, but it's already pretty playable.

If you liked Apocalypse with the Real Time battles, well I preferred the originals, but the UFO Aftermath, Aftershock, Afterlight games may be the thing for you. They also got a lot better later in the series (get Afterlight, but they come in a trilogy box these days anyway).

The otherone, forget it's name, sort of sucked.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 11:21 pm

I've heard of that series, and was interested, until i heard of it's occasional tendency to nuke itself and every other program running at the time. yes, really, that happened to someone. Other people's experiences with it have not been the best, but that was with the LP curse out in force, so it's hard to tell.