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What is the last video game you played?


Quintus

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I've played Journey twice and got really far. But I've never finished it. It's just okay IMO.

 

I'm really struggling to get into anything lately and I'm concerned I'm going off gaming as a hobby. I'm still reading and am actively interested in the industry news, but actually playing stuff is suddenly feeling boring and chore-like. I'm even beginning to wonder if purchasing a PS5 might be a waste of money, at least at the moment. Perhaps it's a phase, but I can't shake the feeling that I've finally grown tired of playing the exact same formulas over and over again. I've been gaming for around 35 years now, so I suppose this had to happen eventually. Gaming rarely offers surprises anymore.

 

 

Titles I've played but not finished in the last 9 months or so:

 

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey - great adventure which is just off-puttingly gigantic and formulaic

 

Journey - elegant but lacking gameplay depth

 

Wreckfest - cool smash 'em up racer

 

Shadow of the Colossus - fight boss rinse repeat

 

Supraland - recommend to JWFan more than anything else on this list

 

Oddworld: Strangers Wrath - older game has its ardent fans but I never got into it

 

Dark Souls 3 - rightfully revered but I'm not as determined as I used to be

 

Get Even - another unremarkable narrative driven first person thriller but with good voice acting

 

Prey - very well made first person metroidvania but I grew tired of doors constantly requiring passcodes, plus I already played the Bioshock trilogy years before

 

South Park: The Stick of Truth - amusing and stopped playing it for no reason

 

The Turing Test - another unremarkable narrative driven first person puzzle adventure

 

Resident Evil 7 - I don't like hiding games where the player is made helpless by design

 

Ori and the Blind Forest - beautiful and enjoyable side-scrolling metroidvania, highly recommended. Maybe I'll get back to it at some point

 

State of Decay - engrossing but stressful zombi apocalypse sim

 

Watchdogs - a mechanically very polished open world game (plays far more responsively than any Rockstar equivalent) but set in a dour city which isn't really all that fun to inhabit

 

Dishonest 2 - good stealth 'em up with cleverly designed levels, but I always grow bored of sneaking about after 20 hrs and with loads left to do

 

 

Game I did actually play to completion last week (in one sitting): ABZÛ - I like really short but consistently captivating games, and I'd never played a deep sea diving one before. Austin Wintory's flowery and throwaway score in the background

 

 

I definitely do prefer shorter games nowadays. And even more than gameplay I seem to require a really compelling reason to play all the way to the end: I need a good story. Trouble is, apart from the occasional exception video game media is probably the worst place to look for one.

 

 

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14 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

:blink:

 

Woah, that's a wild typo. I meant to type terrific score. I fixed it now. 

 

And I actually listened to the album on Spotify after beating the game, it's really good stuff. This guy should get a crack at a big Hollywood movie

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5 hours ago, Jay said:

 

Woah, that's a wild typo. I meant to type terrific score. I fixed it now. 

 

And I actually listened to the album on Spotify after beating the game, it's really good stuff. This guy should get a crack at a big Hollywood movie

The score is excellent. Have you checked out his music for AC Syndicate?

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On 8/1/2020 at 6:28 PM, Koray Savas said:

The score is excellent. Have you checked out his music for AC Syndicate?

 

This game and album is the only time I've ever heard any of his music as far as I'm aware, other than when I watched The Last Movie Star (incidentally, a pretty good film) 

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So, did any JWFanners who played JOURNEY understand the story?  Like the main story told through the hieroglyphs and how your character relates to it?

If not, did you look it up after beating it?

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I looked up Journey after beating it and some people seem to think the game is a metaphor for life, or giving birth, or some shit like that.  I think they are reaching for that one.

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I mean the game was a fun play because of the gameplay and visuals and music; The backstory the game tells you isn't the main attraction, I was just curious what JWFanners thought of it.

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1 hour ago, Quintus said:

That's why naval gazing critics fell over themselves to give it top marks. 

The game is about the inevitability of death. At least that’s what was related to me through it’s pathos, music, and images. The game is abstract enough to derive your own story from it, and I think that’s one of its strongest aspects. 

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19 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

The game is about the inevitability of death. At least that’s what was related to me through it’s pathos, music, and images. The game is abstract enough to derive your own story from it, and I think that’s one of its strongest aspects. 

 

I dunno, derive your own story?  The hieroglyphs tell a very specific story about a very specific civilization, their technological advancements, their split, and using technology against each other.

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I haven't played it since 2014, but I remember thinking birth, death, and rebirth was a major theme, especially given what happens to the character, and the credits visuals.

 

I thought the game was well done, but it never left a burning mark on me where I dropped to my knees and said, "I have experienced the next evolution of video games." 

 

Recently completed the new Paper Mario and Catherine: Full Body.

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I was curious enough to look up other games the same people made, but Flow, Flower, Abzu, and Sky didn't look very appealing to me.

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1 hour ago, Edmilson said:

Spidey will be on Marvel's Avengers, but just for the PS4/5 users:

 

 


I guess Xbox owners can look forward to Halo, Gears, and Forza... again. 

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2 hours ago, Nick Parker said:

Recently completed the new Paper Mario and Catherine: Full Body.

I feel like we may have discussed it briefly, but what are your thoughts on Catherine? One of my favorites from the PS3 generation. 

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I'm about to finish Dragon Quest builders 2 , which is a great combo of RPG and building game. Better than the first one but they still need to work to refine the combat. Very long game too.

 

Sekiro is waiting for me at the library, after 6 months of being on the reservation list.  It's the only souls like game I'm worried will be too hard to enjoy

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4 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

I feel like we may have discussed it briefly, but what are your thoughts on Catherine? One of my favorites from the PS3 generation. 

 

It's one of my favorites of any generation! The mechanics, with the blocks and edges, is so simple but really genius and unique. One of the most satisfying puzzle games I've ever played. The story is really fun and compelling too, but last night, after getting the new character's ending...I don't know, I think it broke a barrier for me and I suddenly started looking the game in a lesser light than I did before. At first I really enjoyed how they made one of the main characters less of a bitch, or at least a more sympathetic one, but now I feel like the expanded scope of the story actually take away some of the original's charm. Which is a shame, since the slight gameplay tweaks added are such a great addition to the original. Music is really effective, though Meguro's pretty limited as an orchestral composer.

 

6 hours ago, Jay said:

I was curious enough to look up other games the same people made, but Flow, Flower, Abzu, and Sky didn't look very appealing to me.

 

Yeah they're pretty much Art: The GameTM developers exclusively, huh.

 

 

5 hours ago, Bilbo said:


I guess Xbox owners can look forward to Halo, Gears, and Forza... again. 

 

 

YES!!! *headbutts empty Mountain Dew can*

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16 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

I feel like we may have discussed it briefly, but what are your thoughts on Catherine? One of my favorites from the PS3 generation. 

 

You ignored my followup post about Journey!

 

If you're curious, I posted some thoughts on Catherine here.

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Life is Strange cosplayers rewind time as true-to-life Chloe and ...

 

Life Is Strange

 

I liked it.  It's starting point is the old Lucasarts/Sierra adventure games, except now with a completely modern, cinematic  interface.  IE when 2 character are talking, instead of a static screen where they nod their heads while you read dialogue for a while, the camera moves around and switches angles and keeps things interesting the whole time (and the game is fully voiced).  The entire game is controlled like a modern 3D game with one stick moving Max and the other controlling the camera.  There's also a lot less item hunting and manipulation, it's most a game where you walk around and talk to people, and have to choose between a bunch of branching dialogue paths.  The occasional instances of having to find items and use them in another location are kind of tedious and the worst part of the game, but luckily there aren't that many of those times.

 

The story is about a 18 year old named Max, who has returned to her pacific northwest town to attend a prestigious art school there after her family had moved away to Seattle when she was 13.  The game starts with her having a vision of the future where a tornado is set to destroy the town, and shortly after you find out she has gained the power to rewind time at will.  This is mostly used by the player for puzzle solving, but the cause and effect of changing time is explored thoroughly as the main story.  The main story also involves Chloe, who was your best friend before you moved away but you haven't talked to since, with whom you reunite with early in the game.

 

It's far from a perfect game; Some of the dialogue is really bad (as we've discussed recently, I've come to expect this from games so it's not a big deal), and the lip syncing of the dialogue is absolutely atrocious throughout (how was this never fixed with patches?), and some of the just discussed item hunting is tedious and repetitive.  But the voice acting is terrific - especially the two leads - most of the characters you meet are interesting, the various things they do with time travel and changing fates is pretty interesting, and the graphics for everything but the characters themselves are pretty great.  The character models are again a let down, like most modern games, where they try for realism but come up short and end up not looking real and not looking artsy, just looking bad.  There are many instances where it is raining or the character's hair is wet for some other reason, and it looks like they are wearing Lego hair, and all kinds of other aspects of their models are wacky throughout too.

 

Overall, the pros outweight the cons, and it really makes you think about cause and effect, and how saying just a few words differently at the right time can have cascading changes.  

 

Playtime: I dunno, 20 hours maybe?  Why can't my PS4 tell me?

 

TL;DR:

 

Pros

  • Voice acting
  • The characters
  • The overall storyline
  • The rewind feature letting you redo dialogue exchanges immediately without having to reload - and also being used as an interesting twist on puzzle solving
  • Good controls and interface (a nice update to the adventure gaming standard), with no inventory to manage at all

 

Neutral

  • The music. While a lot of the score is perfectly fine (calming guitar riffs for quieter moments, droning synth stuff for tense moments), none of it compelled me to listen to it outside the game.  Then there's the songs, which are all emo indie guitar stuff I would neeeeeeeeeeeeeever listen to.  However, it's probably pretty plausible that these are the songs 18 year olds in 2013 Pacific northwest would be listening to, so it's fine in game (some of the lyrics are hilariously bad, though!)

Cons

  • Atrocious lip syncing
  • Awkward character models
  • Some reallly bad dialogue (the writers don't seem to know how to properly use "hella")
  • Padding/stretching out the story with a bunch of pointless item hunts
  • Too short ending (maybe I should have chosen the other option...)

 

life-is-strange-6.jpg

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Another game I've played twice and never finished. I honestly felt too old to be interested in its characters and themes, but I could appreciate the appeal the story might offer to its target audience.

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I think the themes of regret, loss, romance, and friendship are pretty universal.  It's the setting that is more specific

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On 8/3/2020 at 2:37 PM, Jay said:

I dunno, derive your own story?  The hieroglyphs tell a very specific story about a very specific civilization, their technological advancements, their split, and using technology against each other.

Sure, there’s the environmental storytelling, but your character goes on a literal journey through a dead civilization overtaken by nature to the peak of a mountain and dies, to be reborn into a spectacle amongst the clouds. I felt strong themes of Buddhism and self-actualization, achieving nirvana, etc. 

9 hours ago, Quintus said:

Yeah I guess the school setting and the obvious teenager orientated dialogue were my main hindrances.

Hella cool. 

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 Sekiro is kind of what I feared it was. A punishment for never using parry in Dark Souls and forcing me to play it the way I like the least.   I dunno, I'll try to learn but I'm not very good at pushing RB a split second before an enemy  attack hits me .I've never been very good at deciphering specific enemy animations either

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The ultra precise timing I'd read about was what really turned me away from ever considering picking it up too. I imagine it to be like playing an Arkham game without the incoming enemy blow warnings appearing above assailants heads.

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I'm stumped by it .I'm trying the same boss for an hour and I still  don't know what I'm supposed to do in this game

 

your supposed to do perfect blocks all the time but I can't even get a few in

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I got Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic for mobile. Whenever I had a computer, I'd always have a copy of RCT, but I haven't computed for a while now.

 

Screenshot_20200805-171747_RCT Classic.jpg

 

I was hesitant to even try it because I figured I'd hate the touch controls, but for six bucks, I figured what the hell. I've got nothing better to do in these Coronian times. As soon as it started up, I was amazed how it was literally the PC game. More specifically, it's a modified RCT2 with the scenarios from the original game in addition to the second.

 

The touch interface was flawless as far as porting a PC game designed to be played with a mouse. Not perfect, but about as good as they could have gotten it. The various annoyances that came with the mouse controls in the original versions are carried over. I have to admit that after playing it obsessively for days, my hands are sore and I can't look at the real world. But it's been worth it.

 

RCT is deceptively simple. It looks super charming and because it's not a technically demanding game by any stretch of the imagination, it was always playable on even the shittiest of PCs. This is to its credit. Clunky 3D games including RCT3 were awful. Replaying the old scenarios, it's amazing how much I can still get into it. You go into a grueling 3-4 year scenario possibly dreading it, struggling to stay afloat, yet you end up spending so much time with the park just staring at it and scrolling around and putting so much effort into it, you grow attached to the thing. You know, like what was supposed to happen with Tamagatchis but never did.

 

So, we know the game is a classic and holds up. What's changed besides the controls? Well, the game looks better than I remember it. It's formatted for my superwide phone screen and looks totally awesome. There is now a feature where you can fast-forward the game, which is crazy. A year in the game takes about an hour, so this really comes in handy when you want to just skip ahead into the future.

 

I noticed that there was something off about the guests and my staff. They seemed to be wrecking my shit. The game always had various bugs, including idiot janitors seemingly drawn to walking around queue lines where they aren't needed. Dumbasses. It still happens, but I was becoming especially annoyed by my janitors that had patrol areas set and seemed to just be ignoring the puke and trash everywhere. A glitch? Possibly. I've resorted to manually dispatching a guy to various messes.

 

This brings me to the guests. These little fuckers are like Antifa kids. They vandalize everything, puke and throw trash everywhere. You have to be very active with cleaning the park since seemingly everyone in the game gets sick and pukes after a ride now. The janitors weren't helping matters ignoring the messes while Antifa destroyed all my benches, trash cans and lamp posts. Assholes.

 

To be fair, these issues were there in the original game and 2 addressed them with guests less prone to getting sick and first aid rooms. Come to think of it, I wouldn't have minded if the scenarios from the first game were redone to feature elements from 2 that legitimately improved operations, such as ATM machines.

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On 8/5/2020 at 5:24 PM, Koray Savas said:

I thought Sekiro would be easier than other Soulsborne games because of the faster pace. I was wrong. I gave up after encountering some BS troll monster that killed me ad naseum.

 

Took me more than 2 hours to beat it. His jump attack actually track you and rotate 90 degrees in mid air to hit you when you think you avoided it

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8 hours ago, King Mark said:

Took me more than 2 hours to beat it. His jump attack actually track you and rotate 90 degrees in mid air to hit you when you think you avoided it

Yes! It was so frustrating. My point of no return was when he did a ground slam that I was clearly out of range of in a safe zone, and the shockwave sent me flying off the cliff nearby and I died. 

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I think I tried beating the troll  too early. The guards said something about fire scaring him and I only got a fire shooting thing later while exploring. 

I'm also using stealth and combat skills to kill regular enemies (very easily) so I don't get to practice the blocking/parry  thing that's mandatory for bosses. Bosses seem disproportionately difficult compared to regular mobs

 

I did beat a  horse riding boss later using parry so all hope is not lost 

 

Apparently there's 45 bosses in the game so I'm still at the very beginning I think

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Feels like  Sekiro was made for professional gamers who stream on you tube and do moves you'll never be able to

 

Yeah I did a no death Dark Souls run with the controller attached to my feet. Git Gud

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50 minutes ago, King Mark said:

Feels like  Sekiro was made for professional gamers who stream on you tube and do moves you'll never be able to

 

Yeah I did a no death Dark Souls run with the controller attached to my feet. Git Gud

I hate games/gamers like that.  

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not yet

 

I got to  the third phase of the stupid boss I'm trying to beat  and I'm actually learning how to play the game . After a few hours of fighting him I can actually parry him and all that split second shit your supposed to do. The game makes no sense in that they encourage you to kill everything with stealth and then you get to the big boss fight and you never really practiced all the moves your supposed to learn. It's by far harder than Dark Souls.

 

This is the "mid game" boss (supposedly before the game actually gets hard) I'm trying to beat

 

 

 

 

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26 minutes ago, Quintus said:

Lol sod that mate, life's too short. Good for you though.

 at least 50  attempts if not more.

 

I plugged in the controller for my last few attempts. Maybe wireless has a spilt second lag that was affecting the outcome, because the block deflect window is about 1/10th of a second or even less.  I was also about to open up a brand new controller

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