Video Games

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Sun Sep 11, 2011 10:39 pm

Juton wrote:
Stahlseele wrote:http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=444322
As someone who dearly loves the Syndicate franchise I have conflicting feelings about this. Apoplectic nerd rage is one end of the spectrum, how many FPS games do we have, why do we need to take a classic series that wasn't about being an FPS and make it an FPS. On the other end of spectrum I'm mildly intrigued, if they keep a focus on squad based tactics this could work.

It will probably go as well at the Shadowrun FPS.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 12:41 am

It makes me soo angry!
I think that the last remaining franchise EA can screw out of Bullfrog's corpse is Dungeon Keeper and I think that it's not by lack of trying. And that only because Power Monger and Hi Octane never got a sequel in the first place.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 3:46 am

Blasted wrote:...screw out of Bullfrog's corpse is Dungeon Keeper ...

So... you haven't encountered the piece of shit known as "Dungeon" have you?

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 4:01 am

I have, but that's not EA.
I'm waiting for EA to say "We need a new MMORPG, quick, what franchise can we desecrate" and there will be Dungeon Keeper, trying to hide in a corner.

Wesley Street · Post by **Wesley Street** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 3:16 pm

Maxus wrote:L.A. Noire, while an interesting concept and actually felt like playing a cop, proved being a cop is mostly boring.

Agreed. I'm in the last third of the game and at no point have I not been bored. Using the cast of Mad Men and gorgeous scenery doesn't save a Point A-to-Point B-to-Point C game that's less complicated than Police Quest.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 3:39 pm

Wesley Street wrote:
Maxus wrote:L.A. Noire, while an interesting concept and actually felt like playing a cop, proved being a cop is mostly boring.
Agreed. I'm in the last third of the game and at no point have I not been bored. Using the cast of Mad Men and gorgeous scenery doesn't save a Point A-to-Point B-to-Point C game that's less complicated than Police Quest.

Well, a couple of the shootouts were tense. Hell, there was one involving three men and a movie theater that had me on "Paranoid preventive panic fire" mode. I preordered the game, so I have that tommy gun and the property damage would have been quite a lot. But I generally had more fun on the random street crimes.

I enjoyed some of the work needed on the cases, but I realized I don't care about Cole Phelps as a character, or have any opinion on him at all, or any of the other characters (although I like the first two partners as detectives and the Irish police captain was really a joy to let talk). Which is a pretty damning thing to have to wait for the long haul on a game which you theoretically spend so much time with the characters.

In Red Dead Redemption, by comparison, I cared about John Marston and the side characters throughout the story. I'm on pause in a replay of it. Right now. And things weren't boring.

Wesley Street · Post by **Wesley Street** » Mon Sep 12, 2011 8:06 pm

Captain Donnelly's Irish Catholic brutality was amusing but few of the other characters were particularly engaging, especially compared to the NPCs in earlier Rockstar games like GTA: San Andreas. That might be due to the limitations placed by the noir genre and an attempt at realism rather than satire. It's also really hard to do subtlety in a video game. I would love to play an actual drama-heavy game on a console or PC but I would pity any programmer who had to develop it.

One of my biggest gripes with LA Noir is that it feels like I'm playing with an interactive movie rather than a game. The game won't let me screw up AT ALL (save points seem to happen every five seconds) and canvasing a crime scene consists of walking around until my controller vibrates. Growing up on games like Myst, I love puzzles but what LA Noir presents aren't puzzles - they're minor speed bumps that determine how many stars on a case I receive. The random street crime shoot outs are pretty cool and are the only really tense parts of the game. Maybe the developers should have ditched the detective angle and gone for a post-war patrolman game.

I find that the more expensive a game is to produce, the easier it is to beat. GTA 4 was easier than GTA 3 because, by God, the game developers were going to show me every bit of the budget they spent.

I loved Red Dead Redemption. It threw in lots of nice historical bits but it didn't pretend to ignore its spaghetti western roots. Even playing poker and blackjack was fun. Collecting plants became repetitive but at the same time it all felt very real. And Marston wasn't generic Rockstar Games Tough Guy #3. He had a very palpable code of behavior. I probably wouldn't have liked the game if you could bang saloon prostitutes in order to heal.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Sep 13, 2011 3:38 am

I was more amused by his pattern and eloquence. The man was born to talk.

------------------------------------------

Oh, to anyone with Xbox Live (and maybe it's on PSN?).

I'm recommending Bastion as good value for the fifteen dollars.

Here's the beginning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7C4vFRFBtA

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 7:29 pm

I just got through with repeated 'fuck yous' to my cousin.

I loaned him Deus Ex. I was over there when he started it.

On the way into the building plant, it gave him the notification "Thank you for preordering! Here's your shotgun, silenced sniper rifle, and 10,000 credits!"

And, see, I didn't preorder the game. And his Xbox wasn't even hooked up to the Internet.

So that is the most fortunate glitch I've seen in a game, EVER.

He won't even see this, but I gotta say.

Fuck you, Josh. Just...Fuck you.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:07 pm

I did preorder the game, but my XBox is never connected to the internet, and can't be, so my preorder was worthless. Because fuck you for not having the internet on your Xbox apparently.

That pissed me off hardcore. I mean, I got a box, that says augmented edition. They couldn't have me just fucking use that CD and get the benefit? No, I have to have internet for a gaming console too?

So I just downloaded the pirate off the internet a few days later that had both preorders unlocked (extra mission + grenade launcher and sniper rifle + credits).

Pirates, still getting a better game than those who pay for it since 2003.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:35 pm

Steam version of Bastion is pretty good too, once you figure out that you can lock on your guns holding shift anyway.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 9:44 pm

Kaelik wrote:Pirates, still getting a better game than those who pay for it since 2003.

And, no invasive Steamworks DRM bullshit.

Mind you in the end I was actually rather dissapointed with Dues Ex as it was a pretty shallow and dull game, bog standard modern FPS with minor stealth elements, tiny TINY world maps, very few options for what to do and how to do it, etc...

I paid nothing except time and a LOT of hard disk space. I want my money back.

Meanwhile I paid actual MONEY for SPAZ and even though I'm done playing it (barring promised FREE CONTENT PATCHES even one of which should put the deus ex "bonus mission" to shame) I feel that was money well spent.

Also Sword of the Stars 2 should be out soon...

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 1:03 am

PhoneLobster wrote: bog standard modern FPS with minor stealth elements

I'm going to have to call bullshit on this. Sure, it's possible to beat Deus Ex HR without using stealth, but saying it has minor stealth elements is exactly like that dude who said Sword Of The Stars only has minor technologies affected by the random research trees. I don't care what you think about the quality of said stealth elements, there's a fucking lot of them.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 2:44 am

name_here wrote:I don't care what you think about the quality of said stealth elements, there's a fucking lot of them.

And I don't care about what you think "a lot of them" means but they were pretty damn bad and that makes them feel like they were tacked on to a bog standard FPS. And considering HOW COMMON stealth elements tacked on to FPS games are these days... that makes it A BOG STANDARD FPS rather than a stealth game. It's like the difference between Far Cry and... well, Far Cry 2, only one of which felt like a stealth game.

You don't ever need to BE sneaky, you CAN just shoot things, even if you want to BE sneaky you only NEED to get the only actual stealth ability that even begins to matter (the cloaking skin thingy) half way through the entire game (because then very very occasionally a mission will FORCE you to come out of the vents or cross an intersection, or move between cover in view of some guy). And even then basically the one point ever would be enough, and even then at around 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the way through the game even IT isn't enough to remain genuinely stealthy (because very very occasionally, a mission will force you out of vents or whatever in front of three or more guys, or 2 guys in really bad positions who refuse to finish chatting and wander off).

I'm sorry but seeing a air vent entry that pretty much has a glow in the dark sign saying "enter here to skip some baddies" or punching a hole in a wall and taking the route with the free loot and no baddies... isn't a stealth element. It's an alternative route with less baddies and free loot. The ONLY bits of actual "stealth" in the game were the ones where you hide and move between cover avoiding enemy lines of sight which the game rarely ever forced you into (and rarely offered when it wasn't forcing it), and the bits later on where you did basically the same when occasionally forced to only with an invisibility get out of jail free X+ seconds or so.

I mean at least the enemy awareness and communications weren't bullshit "everyone knows exactly where you are and runs at high speed to you location instantly" stuff that some "stealth" FPS games pull. But they were still depressingly bad. The difference between being seen or not seen was a rather poorly defined line with some obvious clipping issues with some forms of cover, bad guys would SOMETIMES respond by coming right at you, but often would just walk to a corpse to check if it was alive, even if they were the fifth guy in a row to do that and get shot in the back of the head from the exact same place and they saw that happen already (which either worked or didn't based on TINY and frankly unintended variations in room and cover layout), and the difference between stealth killing a guy with no alarm, or with an alarm, or with an outright hostile alert was made out of razor thin bullshit.

BAD STEALTH GAME. Also, second rate FPS, terrible role playing, lacked content, weapon upgrades were a pile of bullshit, character skills and upgrades seemed like they weren't even beta tested and weren't intended to really be important anyway, second rate story line, and large portions of it's highly limited content were weapons REMOVED from the normal edition that they seriously charged dupes extra money and inconveniences for.

Nice graphics though. But we expect that from modern FPS games.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 5:08 am

So... it's minor stealth elements that there where a lot places you could use stealth, a lot of ways you could use stealth, and you could play the entire game as a stealth game in three different ways that had nothing to do with each other without it ever being a combat game.

I mean, if you want to say it's a bad stealth game because it's too easy, or because the AI is stupid, or both, that's one thing, but it only has minor stealth elements because 70% of the game is stealth elements is pretty fucking retarded.

PS, it would feel like less of a razor thin line if you were a) better at it, b) took some of the augs from the other stealth focused areas that allowed you to see vision cones and sound propagation on the radar.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 5:25 am

An alternative route is not a stealth element 2/3rds of the "70%" you tout was alternative routes. Just not being in the same tiny box as the guards is not the same as stealth.

I played through "stealthy" because while the game pretends you have options that is the correct one because you get extra points and the character skills to select from are largely entirely fucking useless but even so... you only actual found yourself actually being sneaky a fucking lot less than 70% of the time.

Clearly you played an utterly different game. That didn't just fucking cop out of stealth elements by having alternative routes where you didn't even need to sneak, that just had no, or significantly fewer, guards.

Thief, even the ORIGINAL Thief, had better stealth elements. In Deus Ex about MAYBE half a dozen times EVER did you encounter guards that even had a genuine patrol route instead of just standing still somewhere and MAYBE shuffling their feet or wandering off to a better location after a chat with someone queued on script triggered by your arrival. Because they don't patrol. Because they largely live in fixed rooms. Because they can barely see past their own noses and out of those rooms... you only DO sneaking if you enter those rooms, and notably the larger ones with cover for sneaking around and a few guards pacing in TINY CIRCLES. And the vast majority of the time you just alternative route around those rooms.

Shit. Stealth. Game. Also really the skill advancement? Why are easily 50% of all skills so incredibly fucking bad? Why is the weapon upgrade system so cludgey and tacked on? Why are the maps and the story SO FUCKING SMALL AND CLAUSTROPHOBIC. Oh super multi level megatropollis island in Cyber-China? SMALLER THAN MY FUCKING BACK YARD.

edit: My back yard also has more side quests and a larger selection of weapons.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 5:59 am

PhoneLobster wrote:I played through "stealthy" because while the game pretends you have options that is the correct one because you get extra points and the character skills to select from are largely entirely fucking useless but even so... you only actual found yourself actually being sneaky a fucking lot less than 70% of the time.

...

In Deus Ex about MAYBE half a dozen times EVER did you encounter guards that even had a genuine patrol route instead of just standing still somewhere and MAYBE shuffling their feet or wandering off to a better location after a chat with someone queued on script triggered by your arrival. Because they don't patrol. Because they largely live in fixed rooms. Because they can barely see past their own noses and out of those rooms... you only DO sneaking if you enter those rooms, and notably the larger ones with cover for sneaking around and a few guards pacing in TINY CIRCLES. And the vast majority of the time you just alternative route around those rooms.

You didn't play the game making the correct choices. If you didn't use a non lethal KO on every single enemy in the game, you had less points than the maximum. I mean, I guess you can do whatever after to finish obtaining every single augmentation, which you get the last one right before the last boss fight with a perfect playthrough.

So if you avoided all the guards because it's the "best option" you are an idiot, and if you didn't avoid all the guards, you would notice that most all of them had patrols, even the ones that finished their conversation and then started them.

Yeah, they were really basic patrols, no more advanced than Splinter Cell/Metal Gear patrols from ten years ago, but they are still there.

Again, alternative routes are stealth elements. Cover and patrols are stealth elements. Cameras and lasers are stealth elements. I don't care if you think the stealth elements are bad, they still exist. Shadazar still posts here, as much as I wish he didn't, and just because I don't like his posts doesn't mean he doesn't post. Likewise, just because you don't like how they designed the stealth elements doesn't mean they don't exist.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 7:08 am

Kaelik wrote:So if you avoided all the guards because it's the "best option" you are an idiot

If you went back and killed anything other than low hanging fruit you are an idiot because you wasted additional minutes and hours of your life playing a shit game because, really, you don't need ANYTHING like the full selection of character skills. Many of them do nothing, or nothing you care about.

I mean seriously, go through it in your head, eliminate all the skills that did nothing at all like battery points or the hacking "info" bonuses, eliminate all the costly crap that required manual activation and energy as well as skill point investment but STILL didn't do much, like say, all the see through walls and stealth info + the move silently feet upgrades, etc... Then put a bunch of the ones that were useful but had relatively low impact at a secondary priority, like say, armoured skin, reduced recoil, improved aim while moving, all bar the first point of stealth skin, even inventory.

What do you get left with that matters half a crap? The ability to jump things, the ability to punch through walls, the ability to lift vending machines, the first point of invisibility and some boring but profitable hacking stealth bonuses. That's like a third of the skill points, if that. Mostly abilities that probably should have been free and would have in any game that wasn't MADE OF ASS. And the rest of the abilities are WORSE.

Seriously. Playing completionist is STUPID. The game doesn't even have enough skills you care about to support a single full casual play through, and if it had more the enjoyable way to do it would be to play through with an alternate playstyle and build, but it LACKS THE VIABLE SKILLS FOR A SECOND PLAY THROUGH. It lacks the side quests, the variable story line, or the larger more free environments for one, let alone two play throughs. Indeed it lacks the general content for a completionist play through to be either enjoyable, or even especially DIFFERENT to a casual play through where you DON'T go back for every guard you missed.

You don't need the extra 20 points for that guard, they don't DO anything. Really. How stupid are you?

you would notice that most all of them had patrols, even the ones that finished their conversation and then started them.

No. Walking around ONE DESK IN AN OFFICE. Is not a patrol. Walking up and down maybe ONE CORRIDOR, is not a patrol. Chatting with a guy, then walking off down a corridor on que, THEN "patrolling" back and forth in a 5 meter line in a locker room while pausing without looking behind you for well over a minute at each end, is not a patrol and if you think they are patrols you are a stealth game pussy who hasn't played a REAL stealth game in his life.

Again, alternative routes are stealth elements.

No. An alternative route that has no requirement for you to be stealthy because it contains no enemies and has free loot lying on the ground, which is LITERALLY WHAT ALTERNATE ROUTES IN DEUS EX ARE, is NOT about being stealthy. It's about SEEING the glowing giant air vent, or having your points in "move vending machine" or "punch wall" invested... and THEN seeing the glowing giant air vent equivalent and deciding to play easy mode.

Cover and patrols are stealth elements.

Only there were very FEW times you needed to use cover for stealth and what you are calling "patrols" almost never extended beyond a single room and were usually around 10 meters long AT MOST.

Cameras and lasers are stealth elements.

How many times were lasers anything other than a thing you just hacked and turned off? Or just walked around through the handy no enemy no security system vent? I'm pretty sure it's less than the fingers on one hand.

Cameras, pretty much the same.

they still exist.

The ones you mentioned DO NOT MAKE UP 70% of the game! Because again THE EASY ALTERNATE ROOT WITH NO GUARDS IN is not a stealth element BECAUSE IT HAS NO GUARDS IN IT FOR YOU TO HIDE FROM. And of the stuff you mentioned, alternate routes with nothing to hide from make up THE VAST MAJORITY OF IT.

edit: And my back yard STILL has more side quests and a larger selection of weapons. And even after I finished another side quest in between posts just then.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Sep 20, 2011 10:36 pm

And of course, the Minecraft 1.8.x Update fucked up my Texture Pack again . .
Anybody figured out how to get a 512x512 Pack running without getting the Out of Memory Error? <.<

Guyr Adamantine · Post by **Guyr Adamantine** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 1:00 am

As much as I liked the game, PL is right. Sneaking around is fucking easy even without the augmentations, the same goes for murder and hacking*. Most paths are accesible backwards, and will give you the same XP bonus if you find them either way.

Add to this the stupid-as-shit bosses and retarded A.I., this doesn't scream effort. It was derivative bullshit, but really cool derivative bullshit. The best I could say is that 1: I liked having people to talk to and it being actually possible 2: I was less a pussy than in Crysis.

*: Beside the hacking skill level augs.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 1:58 am

Guyr Adamantine wrote:As much as I liked the game, PL is right. Sneaking around is fucking easy even without the augmentations, the same goes for murder and hacking*. Most paths are accesible backwards, and will give you the same XP bonus if you find them either way.

Add to this the stupid-as-shit bosses and retarded A.I., this doesn't scream effort. It was derivative bullshit, but really cool derivative bullshit. The best I could say is that 1: I liked having people to talk to and it being actually possible 2: I was less a pussy than in Crysis.

*: Beside the hacking skill level augs.

I'm confused why you think that's agreeing with PL. His claim is that the stealth doesn't exist, not that it's easy.

Complaints about the game being bad are justified, saying it's not a stealth game is not.

Guyr Adamantine · Post by **Guyr Adamantine** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 4:59 am

I was merely supporting the parts about the shitty augs and environment, including the AI, and the absolute lack of replay value. Sorry for the confusion.

Yes, the NO STELF FUCK YOU STOOPID argument is nonsensical.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 6:13 am

An excellent freeware demake of Smash Bros got released quite recently.

http://geek.pikimal.com/2011/09/14/supe ... ses-today/
http://www.supersmashland.com/

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 8:55 pm

I found the AI to be pretty decent and the murder-run to be rather difficult, myself. Sure, the AI isn't anything special, but it's also not, "Yeah, that's definitely the sound that the wind makes." Mind, the greatest difficulty of the murder run is that popping in and out of cover to snap out a shot is a pain. Firing blind, meanwhile, is pretty much a joke. It works precisely as well as it would in real life, which is to say that it can be relied upon to shoot somewhere in a 90 degree arc in front of you.

Stealth, meanwhile, is a harsh mistress that will brook no failure from the likes of me. Also, I think I fucked up an event flag in the hooker cop sidequest and it's crashing a lot.

Also, it turns out that the reason the boss fights feel like they were made by an entirely different team than the rest of the game is that they were made by an entirely different team. A team that apparently was not told that pacifist runs were a thing in this game.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Sep 21, 2011 9:28 pm

The AI is good enough for a shooter, because all they have to do is shoot at you once you've started shooting. But you can really see the AI is shit when you play a stealth run, because you end up watching their patrols, which are extremely boring and repetitive, and show absolutely no progress from thief 1/splinter cell/metal gear solid games, which is depressing. And watching their patrols, and picking people off, you can see exactly how dumb their AI is, for, for example, not noticing that everyone is gone, and that the guy they were just shouting across the room to is gone, or when you shoot one with a silenced pistol, when someone else sees his body, they just run over to it, and stand on it, and get shot exactly like the last guy.

Also, it's disconcerting when you hide behind cover, and they walk up to right by your cover, and the game has them turn their head to look at you, because they know where you are, but they aren't allowed to act like it until you are spotted. That was really stupid.

The Gaming Den

Video Games

Re: Syndicate: Human Rev . . eerr o.O