Community MetaSteam | July 2019 - Racing Towards Empty Wallets

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Phoenix RISING

A phoenix always RISES!
Apr 23, 2019
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I disagree with a lot of this, including your premise of the "importance" of dying. I actually prefer the combat style of the slower games like AC: Odyssey and Dark Souls, but I really hate how the DS games disrespect your time. Bayonetta is probably the only combo-heavy action game I've enjoyed till the end, and it was absolutely hard and move choices / item choices mattered a lot, but the checkpoints were largely respectful of your time, if you failed at something you didn't have to wade through 15-30 minutes of stuff you can easily wade through again.

The older DMC games I disliked because every enemy felt like a HP mountain, Bayo balanced it a bit more, and maybe the newer DMC games are more towards that end, I'm not sure. DS has a mix of both, but the thing that keeps me from playing more of those games is simply the terrible checkpointing system. You say it makes it more threatening, and seem to give it more meaning for you, but I totally disagree. Having to replay and refight the exact same path and fight 1, 2, 3, however many times is not meaningful, it's pointless. One of the things I like about AC: Odyssey is how dynamic the encounters are, there's only really like 3-4 kinds of enemies but the terrain / amount / layout / traps / your loadout dramatically change how one fort plays from another fort, and you never really need to do the same fort twice, if you die you have to redo some but the game is so screwy you might not :p

I enjoyed the old God of Wars as much as the new one, although I can respect the new one is incredibly more refined and polished and a much better story teller. The new GoW is also way better at respecting your time than the DS games. I can't really debate the influence of "slower" 3rd person action games vs "faster" ones, because the history of video games is incredibly broad and the influences can be hard to track and I don't feel like digging into it. DS certainly has had an impact, but I don't really agree that DS is a different genre than DMC anymore than FF6 is a different genre than FF12 or Diablo 3 is from Path of Exile. It's a different sub-genre maybe, sure.

Now, all that being said, about 90% of this is personal opinion and preference. Influence is something that could likely be tracked down but I would bet you haven't put in any more research into it than I have, but I wanted to contrast your absolutist statements with my own perspective as someone who enjoys the core mechanics of the Souls-esque games but doesn't play them because of their other design choices, and similarly has issues with most of the more combo-heavy action games. GoW is largely the exception for slower ones and Bayo for faster, for me, in that they both fulfill the excellence of the core gameplay while not bogging it down with unnecessary grinding (in combat or otherwise) or wasted time.


This is another good perspective on it. I died a ton in Bayo vs normal fights (more than in GoW, even vs. Valkyries) but it was OK with me because you just got dropped back into that fight and could use what you just learned. Grinding in SP games is always a delicate balance, it either needs to be entirely designed around it (e.g. Minecraft, where all you do is gather stuff to build stuff) or it needs to be minor at most, otherwise why does it even exist?


Edit: I complain about grinding and retreading as someone that love metroidvanias and tactics RPGs, the first of which has inherent backtracking and the second of which usually rewards grinding. The difference in metroidvanias is that when you revisit an area, it's with upgrades and you are exploring and you are usually stomping on stuff that used to give you challenge, and it's often optional. For grinding in tactics RPGs, it's usually optional to unlock more flashy skills or classes or something or to mess around with new builds. In both cases, dying and being forced to redo something you just did always sucks still and you want to avoid dying even in the same room you restart in.


If you are a completionist (and I did Platinum GoW even though I played it almost a year after it was released), then you fight the Valkyries. These are optional fights, but the game's excellence compels you to attempt the challenge.

Restart places are generally very reasonable. I do remember the slow descent into the Valkyrie vaults though.
 

PC-tan

Low Tier Weeb
Jan 19, 2019
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I have played Monster Island (R18+) and I was surprised by the quality of the game. The game does feel clunky and very slow at times, despite it being in first person view it feels slower than some walking sims that I have played. The animations are nice but the part that stuck out to me the most were the characters and dialogue choices, they did rely on your typical anime harem setting but some how it felt "natural". Parts of it were funny because of how weird they were, but ya the dialogue choices are what make the game memorable. And yes it does have H scenes that were decent, and the first person stuff does feel weird (including how you choose your dialogue options) since it looks like the game was designed to be played in VR......
 

Le Pertti

0.01% Game dev
Oct 10, 2018
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Painkillers and rest, fellow old man
My life doesn't allow for any of that.XD Best I can do is sit a Starbucks and play Minecraft haha, so damn embarrassing walking around like an crooked back slow oldman.XD

Jack shit. My back first went out at 34 because of a job I had. I couldn't do anything for like 2 weeks. You don't realize how much your back is involved in pretty much everything you do until it hurts.
Yeah I used to have problems before, when I would sit a lot and sleep weirdly, haven't had problems in awhile but had to carry some heavy bags today and bam! And yeah just getting around the city has become a hassle, since I can walk fast and even slightest changes in the angle of the ground can make me curl up and cry haha.

sit in a hot tub if available.

if not bengay and alcohol
Best I can do is coffee!:D But yeah damn hot bathtub does sound great!
 

goat

Mass Erect
Jan 21, 2019
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My life doesn't allow for any of that.XD Best I can do is sit a Starbucks and play Minecraft haha, so damn embarrassing walking around like an crooked back slow oldman.XD



Yeah I used to have problems before, when I would sit a lot and sleep weirdly, haven't had problems in awhile but had to carry some heavy bags today and bam! And yeah just getting around the city has become a hassle, since I can walk fast and even slightest changes in the angle of the ground can make me curl up and cry haha.
I feel for you. I got sick earlier this year and after laying in bed for 2 days, my old back injury flared up so bad I couldn't lay down anymore. I had a 103 degree temperature and couldn't get bed rest.
 
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lashman

lashman

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I wish Steam would allow client-side renaming and sort names.
same ... especially for stuff like Tom Braider ... or AssCreed, where ubi don't give a single fuck anymore and will never fix it

just look at this fucking bullshit:



not only are they not chronological ... not only they have the shitty registered sign randomly in the name ... but as a special "fuck you" - all three AssChronicles have "the other apostrophe"

fuck you, ubi ... fuuuuuuuck youuuuuu
 

Le Pertti

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I feel for you. I got sick earlier this year and after laying in bed for 2 days, my old back injury flared up so bad I couldn't lay down anymore. I had a 103 degree temperature and couldn't get bed rest.
Yeah that's why I think I haven't had problems in such a long time, I walk a lot nowadays. Think it was a combination of me sleeping little longer today and then going to carrying three heavy backbacks and lifting them up, not with the knees but bending the back.XD

Think "walk it off" actually applies here.

Nah, some kind of painful "massage" that hurt like hell, and I would be back to normal.
I can't possibly tell you what bones he cracked and whatnot, since I was too busy insulting him for hurting me. :grinning-face-with-smiling-eyes:
Haha, well short pain certainly is better than drawn out for days!XD

Are you me? My back has been killing me since last Saturday.
That long!? I couldn't remember how long my back pains would last, but was kind of hoping it would get better till tomorrow haha!
 
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Flips

Overwhelmingly Positive
May 12, 2019
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same ... especially for stuff like Tom Braider ... or AssCreed, where ubi don't give a single fuck anymore and will never fix it

just look at this fucking bullshit:



not only are they not chronological ... not only they have the shitty registered sign randomly in the name ... but as a special "fuck you" - all three AssChronicles have "the other apostrophe"

fuck you, ubi ... fuuuuuuuck youuuuuu
GOG Galaxy 2.0 to the rescue

Revealed content
It lets you change game titles (and images).

(just using the hide thing in case there's some NDA I forgot about :fearful-face:)
 
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lashman

lashman

Dead & Forgotten
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another great thread from Rob:

(i'll just paste everything as a quote because twitter embeds fucking suck for threads)

Oh right. The game price discourse was because Wolfenstein has microtransactions so once again a bunch of folk decided games need to go up in price and ok, now I've caught up with yesterday.

These folks do know that if games cost 150 quid, a suit would still mandate microtransactions, right?

Anyway. Both sort of fascinated by how folks rationalise this sort of thing and horrified that once again, the gamers have found a random developer to hurl abuse at like it's their fault we exist in this hellscape.

It's kinda like a bunch of folk, when confronted with these often obnoxious currencies where you can sink multiple seventy quids in or whatever, go "ah, that'll be to recoup the dev cost", making their inclusion seem absolutely necessary.

(I know Wolf's is fifteen quid and as vaguely useless an inclusion as could be managed)

All a company has to do is to keep including them and folks spin up the reasoning for them. So from there, it's only a short mental leap to "well, we need to put prices up" and bugger me at that.

Then rationalising that with "well, adjusting for inflation" as if that's it, that's how everything works and it makes perfect sense because it's not like the economics of anything is a wee bit more complex, it really is that simple.

Meanwhile, Bobby buys his seventy second yacht.

I realise that not every game with microtransactions pulls in what GTA Online does or whatever but I kinda don't know how you can look at GTA Online or Fortnite and go "yep, dev costs"
 

SRossi

regretten? rien!
Dec 9, 2018
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Haha yeah, I do have to realise I'm officially old. My gf keeps telling me to go to the doctor, but that feels little overkill right?
well, depends. I had quite severe back problems that I managed to deal with with a rigorous sport program over about a year.
but then there are the back problems that are so severe that you have to go see a doctor or go into hospital to get help. I once hat to carry someone from the 5th floor who fought in the Yugoslavian war, so you can imagine he knew about pain, but his back was so ruined that he cried like a baby in front of his wife, his children and us (paramedics) and even more intensely when we tried to help him down to the ambulance. the staircase was so narrow and steep that we couldn't carry him down on the stretcher but had to use a chair. He got into hospital and had a few operations.
That was the most severe case I've seen, but there are a loooot of such cases and these operations are quite common :p So, really, it depends on your case. At least a sport/fitness program to strengthen your back would be a good idea.
 
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Le Pertti

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well, depends. I had quite severe back problems that I managed to deal with with a rigorous sport program over about a year.
but then there are the back problems that are so severe that you have to go see a doctor or go into hospital to get help. I once hat to carry someone from the 5th floor who fought in the Yugoslavian war, so you can imagine he knew about pain, but his back was so ruined that he cried like a baby in front of his wife, his children and us (paramedics) and even more intensely when we tried to help him down to the ambulance. the staircase was so narrow and steep that we couldn't carry him down on the stretcher but had to use a chair. He got into hospital and had a few operations.
That was the most severe case I've seen, but there are a loooot of such cases and these operations are quite common :p So, really, it depends on your case. At least a sport/fitness program to strengthen your back would be a good idea.
Ok I don't believe my back is that bad! Haha. But yeah depending on tomorrow, when I need to carry some heavy shit again, depending on how my back feels after that I'll consider going to the hospital to see if there is anything that can help, just a little,
 

Tizoc

Retired, but still Enabling
Oct 11, 2018
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Oman
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Thief 2014 b10

It is a rather curious stealth game. It has some decent ideas with the utilization of dark and light that can affect guards' and enemies noticing you.
The hub world I think is OK but the real big issue is the Mini Map and map in general; both when brought up will only show stuff in your closest vicinity, meaning you can't use the map like in any other game to see where Basso (for side missions) and the merchant are to get stuff from them. As such you need to memorize from recent traversal where they are at least in the early game.
Birds, Dogs and Broken Glass add a somewhat annoying layer to the gameplay, as they can be easily unnoticable unless one uses Vision and them forcing the player to walk hella slow will break the pace if you were speeding thru the area.

The hub wasn't confusing to navigate for me, as I focused on taking the high road and tried to get past guards as stealthly as possible.
I should note that Mission 7 is a point of no return so one should get as many upgrades as they want or side stuff cleared before doing it.

I would give it a 7 out of 10, but it'd be an interest game to speedrun and go for a pure Ghost playthrough. Opportunist is the same as Ghost, with Ghost requiring the player to not interact with enemies in the form of stealing from them, making them suspicious in any way and knocking them down.
Also Smoke Arrows kill dogs and birds, so be careful.
 

Tizoc

Retired, but still Enabling
Oct 11, 2018
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Aight let's take a look at the shooty bang games that I own and aim to play
Bullet Witch
The Club
Cold Fear
Crysis 1 games [I own these on GOG so I'll play them from there eventually]
Dark Void
Doom (2016)
FEAR 2
FEAR 3
GUN
Hard Reset Redux
Homefront
Homefront The Revolution
Interstellar Marines
Kane and Lynch 1
Kane and Lynch 2
Medal of Honor, Call of Booty edition
Medal of Honor Airborne
Painkiller Black edition
Painkiller overdose
Painkiller Hell and damnation
Quake 4
Quantum Break
Rogue Trooper Redux
Sunset Overdrive
Rainbow Six 3
Turok 1
Turok 2
Unreal Gold
Unreal 2
Western 1849
Xenus 2
ZOMBI
Zombie Army Trilogy

I should alternate between them over time.

Thiefy screens.
 
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Ge0force

Excluding exclusives
Jan 12, 2019
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I don't want to act like a paid shill, but seriously guys, Horace is really, really good! 😍

It's a story driven Metroidvania about a robot being adopted by a family and his struggles with his emotions. It's both funny and emotional, and the game has lots of references to retro game classics.

The entire game is made by a single developer, he worked over 6 years on it. The amount of polish is incredible!

So do yourself a favor and buy this gem. 😊

 
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lashman

lashman

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Nice. If they can fix the few remaining graphical niggles it's almost as good as a PC port. (Or maybe better, given that it supports 60 FPS and arbitrary resolution in RPCS3 and that's not a given for a PC port :p)
well, i mean - it's not like squeenix are going to port it ... so it's the next best thing, i guess :p
 

MJunioR

MetaMember
Mar 13, 2019
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I kinda went through (read as: played and completed only mission objectives and a couple mission stories) the Standard edition content of Hitman 2 and finished the last mission, The Ark Society today. It's Hitman alright. The amount of "extra" content in this game is insane though. I don't plan on discoverying every piece of thing to do nor repeat missions in order to see hidden things but it really feels like that I got my money's worth. Especially considering that every mission from the first game is there since I got Hitman 1 from Humble.
 
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