Video Games

[hyzmarca]

I picked up Far Cry 3 in a humble bundle. It's amazing. I'm really enjoying it. Want to buy more Far Cry games, now. Bought 2 on sale, tried it, didn't really care for it that much, mainly because the use of safepoints instead of save anywhere, and the map is a pain in the butt. But 4 looks good. And so does Primal. I'm going to wait for Primal, though. Can't afford that.

[Kaelik]

Uh....

1) Far Cry 2 is the best Far Cry, and if you don't like that and do like 3 you are a terrible person.

2) You can save anywhere in Far Cry 2 as long as you have a PC, which... I mean, you should.

[Meikle641]

I'm legitimately excited for FF9 being released on Steam later this year. I'm sure me and the three other people that buy it will be very happy.

I know I'll be buying it. Hope they improve the load times, but I doubt it.

Also! Anybody playing Superhot? Enjoying it a lot. Glad I did the Kickstarter.

[MGuy]

I'm legitimately excited for FF9 being released on Steam later this year. I'm sure me and the three other people that buy it will be very happy.

I know I'll be buying it. Hope they improve the load times, but I doubt it.

If I didn't already have FF9 on my PS3 I would consider getting it again but I'm not THAT much of a fan. I'll just be sitting here waiting for them to release War of the Lions on the PC so I can play it.

[Chamomile]

Y'know Far Cry 2 is actually my favorite? I don't like how the enemy outposts are completely unaffected by having been wiped out, but I like it better than being able to permanently and fairly easily seize control of them for the Rebel Alliance. In Far Cry 2, me and my mates had our own agendas and we worked with whatever factions and each other depending on whether their objectives aligned with ours. It really gave me the sense of being a foreign soldier of fortune here for my own reasons, and the overall progress of the war was mostly just background music, and I had to get my stuff and get out before the music stopped. It would've been better if the war did progress and territory noticeably changed hands, just without a lot of input from the player, but it's still pretty good how it is.

[Blicero]

Yeah, Far Cry 2 is my usual example of "This game has huge systemic issues that make it difficult to enjoy at times but is still really good and very much worthwhile". It also has the best sniper rifle in any FPS I have played.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, Far Cry 2 is my usual example of "This game has huge systemic issues that make it difficult to enjoy at times but is still really good and very much worthwhile". It also has the best sniper rifle in any FPS I have played.

Honestly, I feel like most of the systematic issues of Far Cry 2 are part of what make it a better game. If it didn't have game mechanics that made your adventures hellish, it wouldn't be accurately portraying what it is trying to. It has a very thin line that it has to walk between making you love the game and making you hate the world. It does a better job than I would have ever expected.

It would be better if the outposts noticeably changed in any way, but for the most part they have to stay just as lethal, because you are at war with both sides of the conflict.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Alright, for those who played Oblivion. what the hell does Invisibility even do?

Here are things that Invisibility won't do:

* Keep you from being detected. Keep in mind that I have the Black Hand robes, sneak in the mid-50's, I'm walking, and staying in the darkness anyway. Nope, the eye lights up when I step anywhere into the room.

* Allow you to disengage from hostile mobs. If you cast invisibility and go into sneak, anything that has already detected you will unerringly chase you down like the fucking terminator. Keep in mind that I'm not talking about the guards, I'm talking about random rats and bandits I run into.

Should I just forget about going invisible at any time, or is there something I am doing wrong. Also, Stealth was a lot better in Skyrim, it seems barely usable in Oblivion.

[hyzmarca]

Alright, for those who played Oblivion. what the hell does Invisibility even do?

Here are things that Invisibility won't do:

* Keep you from being detected. Keep in mind that I have the Black Hand robes, sneak in the mid-50's, I'm walking, and staying in the darkness anyway. Nope, the eye lights up when I step anywhere into the room.

* Allow you to disengage from hostile mobs. If you cast invisibility and go into sneak, anything that has already detected you will unerringly chase you down like the fucking terminator. Keep in mind that I'm not talking about the guards, I'm talking about random rats and bandits I run into.

Should I just forget about going invisible at any time, or is there something I am doing wrong. Also, Stealth was a lot better in Skyrim, it seems barely usable in Oblivion.

Invisibility sucks in Morrowind and Oblivion. Use Chameleon instead. 100% Chameleon is actual undetectability.

[Kaelik]

You should make items with Chameleon on them and stack them, it's much better. For absolutely no reason I can understand, invis does nothing, but 100% Chameleon does everything you would want Invis to do.

[Hadanelith]

I don't know that ANYONE understands why Invisibility is distinct from Chameleon. Or what the hell the point is. But yeah, Chameleon is the way to do anything.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Sounds like a plan then. I have Chameleon as well and it seems like I get more use out of it, I can enchant some chameleon gear.

EDIT: I was having problems with invisibility during Meridia's quest, the reward gives me a nice boost towards 100% chameleon.

[Blicero]

Honestly, I feel like most of the systematic issues of Far Cry 2 are part of what make it a better game. If it didn't have game mechanics that made your adventures hellish, it wouldn't be accurately portraying what it is trying to. It has a very thin line that it has to walk between making you love the game and making you hate the world. It does a better job than I would have ever expected.

It would be better if the outposts noticeably changed in any way, but for the most part they have to stay just as lethal, because you are at war with both sides of the conflict.

Yeah, but the game could have let, say, ten minutes pass before respawning an outpost's occupants. That would have made basic travel significantly more enjoyable while still emphasizing that the area you are in is a war-torn hellscape that cannot be changed or fixed.

Or the game could have some system built into it where outpost occupants and wandering guard patrols are only hostile if you fire on them or their nearby friendlies. Or maybe they attack you 10% of the time they see you or whatever. The two factions are at war with each other, but it's mostly a cold war, so some capacity for peaceful traversal is plausible.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, but the game could have let, say, ten minutes pass before respawning an outpost's occupants. That would have made basic travel significantly more enjoyable while still emphasizing that the area you are in is a war-torn hellscape that cannot be changed or fixed.

Or the game could have some system built into it where outpost occupants and wandering guard patrols are only hostile if you fire on them or their nearby friendlies. Or maybe they attack you 10% of the time they see you or whatever. The two factions are at war with each other, but it's mostly a cold war, so some capacity for peaceful traversal is plausible.

It would be fucking terrible if they never attacked or attacked 10% of the time.

Like I said, it would be better if there was some change at all, but that's very different than saying they did a bad job.

[Chamomile]

What I'd really like to see in Far Cry 2 is some kind of system like each outpost has a certain amount of military power attached to it as a hidden variable, and when you clear an outpost it goes down by about 1-2% of the average. Certain missions might also drag one or more outposts down by 5-10%. Outposts that are on the border with the enemy and have some favorable ratio of military power compared to an enemy outpost across the border will make a push against it, with a certain chance of succeeding or failing. If it succeeds, most of the enemy power from that outpost retreats to neighboring outposts, only some is lost, maybe about 20% on average. If the victory is decisive enough, and if there are other valid targets nearby, have that momentum lead into an immediate follow-up attack. Once the momentum is exhausted, that faction won't make any attacks in that sector of the map for a long while, whatever amount of time it takes so that there's almost always a fight going on somewhere but almost never a fight going on where you are (well, except the one that started when sentries spotted you). There's sporadic fighting across the country, but no major military engagements.

When a faction's total military power across all outposts drops below a certain threshold, they call up reserves, which gives a surge of military power to all outposts. The first time this happens, the faction calling up reserves just starts to have noticeably more mercenaries. The second, they start raiding farmland for food. On the third, they've raided the farmland dry, so all the civilian farmers are gone now (not that there were many in Far Cry 2 to begin with, but you'd increase the initial number for this effect), so instead they start abducting villagers for use as slave labor in the diamond mines. On the fourth and on, they start raiding villages for every scrap of resources they might still have lying around, maiming or executing the villagers.

When one faction has a serious land advantage on another, the Jackal arranges a reversal, sapping the military power of the dominant faction's outposts so that they're much less likely to attack, and the losing faction is more likely to take ground.

Don't call attention to any of this. Just have the country sink deeper into Hell, bit by bit, have territory change hands, attacks succeed or fail all largely independent of the player's intervention or even presence on the battlefield. It's mostly irrelevant from a gameplay perspective, regardless of which side controls an outpost they're both hostile, but the war churns and progresses in the background.

All of that might be too much trouble to bother with to get the player slightly more immersed in a world where a war is happening, but its outcome doesn't really matter and you can't really affect it much one way or the other to begin with.

[Shrapnel]

Sounds like a plan then. I have Chameleon as well and it seems like I get more use out of it, I can enchant some chameleon gear.

EDIT: I was having problems with invisibility during Meridia's quest, the reward gives me a nice boost towards 100% chameleon.

Here's a great way to get real good gear for enchanting: What you wanna do is get all the "Summon Daedric Armor" spells, and the get a spell that damages armor. Make a custom spell that, when cast, damages YOUR armor (set the target to "Self"). Then, summon some Daedric armor onto yer bad self, and cast the custom armor damaging move. After you do that, quickly use a repair hammer on the damaged summon armor. After you repair it, the armor will become a regular item, and it won't disappear. Now you have free Daedric armor that had the added bonus of being WEIGHTLESS, which, when enchanted with chameleon, becomes the ULTIMATE SNEAKING GEAR(TM).

(Because you won't be encumbered by your armor, so you can carry more illicit goods, 'cos c'mon, what else are gonna use the armor for? Sneak attacking? Ha!)

[Kaelik]

To be fair, with high armor skills, all armor becomes weightless in Oblivion.

[Shrapnel]

True, true. But this route is a lot more fun that just grinding armor skills. (To me, at least.)

[Blicero]

It would be fucking terrible if they never attacked or attacked 10% of the time.

Why would it be terrible? The basic act of driving or boating is actually pretty fun in the game. You don't need to be constantly shooting guys while moving from place to place to still have a good time. Traversing the map and having to kill or run away from a bunch of dudes every five minutes is less tedious than traversing the map and having to kill or run away from a bunch of dudes every thirty seconds. But the former still communicates that the area you are in is dangerous and overrun with gangs of soldiers. And making it so that nothing you do keeps the soldiers away for more than some brief period of time reinforces that you are not conquering the region or making it safer or whatever. The outposts need to be kind of tedious to properly evoke the themes, but they don't need to be that tedious.

The missions you are carrying out all involve copious manshooting. So whenever you do a mission, you'll still make all the nearby outposts hostile. You are still guaranteed shootouts and chases whenever something major happens. You just need to reduce the frequency of the random encounters.

[OgreBattle]

FF9 has some great looking models, made the best of textures and polygons they were limited to.

Have a giant in leather chaps and speedo

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I still have the stuffed Vivi doll that Squaresoft was giving out to the first people to sign up for playonline.com back in the day.

[hyzmarca]

I don't know that ANYONE understands why Invisibility is distinct from Chameleon. Or what the hell the point is. But yeah, Chameleon is the way to do anything.

Invisibility is inexpensive complete invisibility with severe limitations. Chameleon is partial invisibility that stacks with sneak and blind. Hypothetically, the first is used to avoid fights early in game, while the second is a buff that's applied to sneaky characters.

[Maxus]

I've been rocking Stardew Valley and MKX this week.

Stardew Valley is a pretty good Harvest Moon clone/homage. With combat. And booze. Maybe a little bit of Animal Crossing in there, with the fishing and running favors for people.

And the new characters happened, so MK X persists in calling itself MKXL.

So far, they're fun. I'm going to have an MK-a-thon this weekend with some buddies as we put them through their paces. I'm intentionally not maining anything because I want the guys who don't have it to stand a chance of winning.

I especially like that they did a weekly tower where you try out each character in their variations, even if you don't have the DLC. It's a thoughtful touch, and advertising.

I'm really fucking pleased they put Cyber Sub-Zero as a secret playable in Triborg, and he has as much attention to his differences as the rest of them. Hell, the only thing he has in common with normal Sub-Zero is the freezeball and slide.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I finally beat Mega Man X. And it only took me 20 years...

[Darth Rabbitt]

Now try beating Mega Man X3. That game is a bitch and a half.