Media Videogame thread

[bdt2002]

A bit of a random question: is it just me, or was 2010 peak gaming? I have a feeling this might just be me, but come on. What other year would give me Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Pokémon Black & White, and Call of Duty: Black Ops all in the same year? These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, too. There’s probably a lot that I’m missing, so feel free to remind me of some and make me feel incredibly stupid in the process

Okay thanks

 

[Ironmage]

A bit of a random question: is it just me, or was 2010 peak gaming? I have a feeling this might just be me, but come on. What other year would give me Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Pokémon Black & White, and Call of Duty: Black Ops all in the same year? These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, too. There’s probably a lot that I’m missing, so feel free to remind me of some and make me feel incredibly stupid in the process

Okay thanks

I think that this sort of thing just ends up being a sampling of which games a person enjoyed. For me, I think of the 2017-2019 period as mostly dissapointment with the occasional diamond in the rough (MM11 my beloved...), but I'm pretty sure a lot of people would disagree.

 

[CryoGyro]

years you were a kid with enough of a brain to remember well - peak

everything after - mid

 

[Rugi]

I played Frostpunk. Pretty fun twist on the city builder genre and I love the narrative aspect and the impressive amount of cinematic flair for a city sim. That being said it's really lacking in replay value. I hope the second game fleshes everything out a lot more. The two ideology trees being fundamentally identical other than a fascism and religious cult coat of paint was kinda lame

 

[Mr. Uncompetitive]

Agree with Cryo, there's always going to be good years and bad years, it's a matter of just paying attention and finding stuff that clicks with you. One of my fav games of all-time came out in 1991 (long before I was born and had functioning memories), another one of my fav games came out last year. The only half-serious opinion I hold is that barely any good video games came out in the '80s (the first good one imo was Space Harrier not Super Mario Bros)

In regards to 2010, one of my Top 3 fav games ever got localized that year (Sin and Punishment Star Successor, alongside other games I love like Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors and Pokemon HGSS

 

[MrHands]

A bit of a random question: is it just me, or was 2010 peak gaming? I have a feeling this might just be me, but come on. What other year would give me Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Pokémon Black & White, and Call of Duty: Black Ops all in the same year? These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, too. There’s probably a lot that I’m missing, so feel free to remind me of some and make me feel incredibly stupid in the process

Okay thanks

To me it was some time in the late 90s. Pokemon Red / Gold, Goldeneye, Starcraft, Banjo Kazooie, etc. There's also the very early 2000s when we had Halo, Morrowind, Black and White (the not Pokemon one), and Red Alert 2.

Imo peak gaming just comes down to personal preference / nostalgia. All the games I just mentioned I consider some of the best of all time, and yet objectively speaking they're massively obsolete compared to modern equivalents.

years you were a kid with enough of a brain to remember well - peak

everything after - mid

Oh yeah, what he said.

 

[myowngamertag]

A bit of a random question: is it just me, or was 2010 peak gaming? I have a feeling this might just be me, but come on. What other year would give me Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Pokémon Black & White, and Call of Duty: Black Ops all in the same year? These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, too. There’s probably a lot that I’m missing, so feel free to remind me of some and make me feel incredibly stupid in the process

Okay thanks

The objectively correct "peak gaming" year is 1998.
Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid, Pokemon Red & Blue, Resident Evil 2, Half Life, Starcraft, Banjo-Kazooie, Grim Fandango, Tekken 3, Thief, Gran Turismo, the list can go on and on and on

 

[Karxrida]

The objectively correct "peak gaming" year is 1998.
Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid, Pokemon Red & Blue, Resident Evil 2, Half Life, Starcraft, Banjo-Kazooie, Grim Fandango, Tekken 3, Thief, Gran Turismo, the list can go on and on and on

Yeah, the year seems pretty tight. Also has FFVII, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Sonic Adventure, and the Pokémon TCG game for Game Boy Color.

 

[Candelia]

A few friends introduced me to Guilty Gear Strive and I think I'm in love with the series.

ignore me always listening to the GGST OST

 

[Oglemi]

I played Frostpunk. Pretty fun twist on the city builder genre and I love the narrative aspect and the impressive amount of cinematic flair for a city sim. That being said it's really lacking in replay value. I hope the second game fleshes everything out a lot more. The two ideology trees being fundamentally identical other than a fascism and religious cult coat of paint was kinda lame

The board game is actually better due to exactly that, better replay value, and I'd recommend it if it wasn't over $100 retail, but if you have the chance play it with 4 people

 

[ChaosNinjaGaming]

I have a comically large amount of games in my backlog that I haven't really touched. These include:
Metroid Prime Remastered, Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD, SMT V, Pokemon White 2, Pokemon Crystal, Persona Q2, Pokemon Violet, Rayman Legends (only touched it once and never again), and probably many more. I'm too lazy to make myself play them so I'll just wait and see if I feel like playing them one day.

 

[TheMantyke]

1998 is honestly probably the top gaming year ever, but 2017 shouldn’t be overlooked for all the insane quality there. The switch, nier automata, cuphead, Mario Odyssey, BOTW, Sonic Mania, Persona 5, and the birth of the battle Royal genre with PUBG is an absolute haymaker of a line up. I am more partial to 1998 because again, childhood gaming vibes, but even without much nostalgia attached at all, 2017 hit ridiculously hard.

 

[Divine Retribution]

birth of the battle Royal genre with PUBG

*H1Z1 crying in the corner*

 

[myowngamertag]

I have a comically large amount of games in my backlog that I haven't really touched. These include:
Metroid Prime Remastered, Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD, SMT V, Pokemon White 2, Pokemon Crystal, Persona Q2, Pokemon Violet, Rayman Legends (only touched it once and never again), and probably many more. I'm too lazy to make myself play them so I'll just wait and see if I feel like playing them one day.

That's a good backlog, prioritize Prime Remastered and Rayman Legends imho

 

[Ironmage]

We've all heard about points of no return, but I've been having difficulty with points of "next intersection in 5km."

More specifically, I've encountered a couple times recently in big RPGs where installing a temporary restriction ends up breaking the intense mood that seems to be the reason for the restriction in the first place because of the gameplay balancing concerns. I've kind of nicknamed this 'rift prevention' to myself, after an old experience where temporary loss of backtracking led to a long and painful brute force solution.

Effectively, the core problem is that the game can't tell the exact capabilities of the player's setup or how well they can adapt to whatever's hitting them next. It's entirely possible they barely scraped by the last encounter or boss. In that case, they would need to spend some time regrouping/grinding for a subsequent encounter that's more challenging or demands a different composition. This part is just a description of a difficulty curve. The issue arises when the ability to regroup/grind is cut off just after the player scrapes by. The player getting stuck is a very bad outcome, because being stuck is not a good gameplay experience. But then, in order to ensure the player isn't stuck, you either need a designated grinding area or to ensure that the encounters don't scale much until full access is returned. If the vibe you're going for at this point in the story is that the characters are desperate, that doesn't align with the gameplay constraint. The lack of continuity in the difficulty curve's slope is also pretty jarring on its own.


The two specific examples that really brought this to mind are below:

Xenoblade 3, Chapeter 5/6 spoilers

The game is usually clever with its exp setup to try to keep the players on-level despite the wildly varying amount of sidequest content a given player is likely to do. Exp can be earned by doing things not directly related to combat like completing quests or exploring the map but these sources only actually apply to the character levels when the player requests it. Grinding fights for exp is then redundant: if you're underlevelled, you can just do some sidequests from a previous area. This also allows for sidequests to be more story-focused instead of just a container for fights. There are other minor issues with the system as implemented (still needing to grind for item drops, for example), but only one's of major relevance here.

Late in Chapter 5, the party is infiltrating a prison and are cut off from the rest of the map by what might as well be a ledge in an older pokemon game. Which means that the system described above immediately starts breaking down. How can the player replace combat grinding with sidequests if they can't access the sidequests? Well, everything's still fine as long as there isn't anything too important at the end of the segment. Oh wait, it's the most important story bosses this side of the endgame.

The game tries to resolve this by including some quests within the prison itself. But these aren't the lovingly created vignettes of the rest of the game. These are straight up the time-wasting "get me 20 of X item" quests that are heavily abstracted elsewhere because people don't like playing them. Which are required to do for everyone, not just the poor fool who can't beat the next boss. Did I mention said boss is the second most gimmicky in the game, you don't have access to the extra party slot during it for reasons (would have been a great and easy to explain in-story moment for the Nopon to kick some ass too), and detailed changes to the rest of the party require a resource that you *don't* get from quests?

Oh, but we're not done yet. There's still two (or three, I don't quite remember) fights after this, and no room for even blatant-padding quests. So they're just way easier than the first one. Let me tell you, "just get this crap over with so I can get back to an actual party menu" is pretty much the exact opposite of the state I was supposed to be feeling at this point.

FE Engage, chapter 10 spoilers

This segment has a retreat map after a failed offensive, with the team stripped of the super mechanic and carrying over the units from the previous map.

I get it, a retreat map can be to get correct in Fire Emblem. When so much of the game is fighting outnumbered 2:1 or more, it can be hard to accurately portray an overwhelming force. Going in to the map, I had pretty high hopes. After all, I was well aware of how much auto-hitting damage the enemy had access to. But they didn't use the vast majority of them, only the one that can put its user out of position. Between that and a lack of mages, there wasn't anything that threatened my covert units in the ample forests. I expected constant enemy reinforcements that never came, only a group that showed up at the very end when I was "rescued" (reached the final part of the map after clearing the vast majority). It felt disappointingly easy.

It definitely feels like this is due to the placement of the map. It's possible that I would have been required to play this with less than a full squad if characters had died in the proceeding map, and the rewind mechanic was disabled by the plot (for 75% of this map only).

 

[Morkal]

Does anyone here enjoy playing Tower Unite? I've been enjoying the new minigolf course they just added in, I love the neon forest type of aesthetic that it has going on (Tower Unite is basically a giant social hub of a game you can buy on Steam where you can play minigames with friends, make your own condos, tons of cool stuff)

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1646676756122705922

The man, the myth, the legend himself, Matthew Mercer, will be playing Ganondorf in the upcoming Zelda BOTW sequel, Tears of the Kingdom.

Nintendo usually doesn't get big names in the VO world like him in their flagship IP projects but getting to hear the man in a Zelda game of all things is a real treat.

Fun fact: Before Matt became known as a voice actor in cartoons and games and the Critical Role Dungeon Master which are what he's known for nowadays, the guy used to run his own webseries over a decade ago called There Will Be Brawl, where he played Ganondorf back then. Now he's actually getting to play Ganondorf for real in a proper Zelda game. Talk about coming full circle.

 

[Karxrida]

Got a copy of Battle Network Legacy Collection early. Physical supremacy.

Anyway, I've been playing Battle Network 6 since I want to prep for PVP (it's the best one for it) and turned on Buster MAX Mode to shred through the story quickly. It's working wonders, naturally. Then I remembered that Bass can be fought super early in this game, so I went to beat him up.

Deleted his ass in like 10 seconds. This is stupid and I love it.

 

[ChrystalFalchion]

Just finished Fire Emblem Engage. While the story was a step down from Three Houses imo, it feels less bloated than that game (didn’t need Silver Snow imo). Looks great (love the animation where the character parries an arrow with their sword) and the minute to minute gameplay is some of the best in the series imo. The weapon proficiency system is a welcome change compared to grinding weapon ranks in the old games. Also has a killer soundtrack, though I do still think Three House’s was better).

About to do a Hard Mode ironman run (no resets, permadeath on).

 

[Ironmage]

Just finished Fire Emblem Engage. While the story was a step down from Three Houses imo, it feels less bloated than that game (didn’t need Silver Snow imo). Looks great (love the animation where the character parries an arrow with their sword) and the minute to minute gameplay is some of the best in the series imo. The weapon proficiency system is a welcome change compared to grinding weapon ranks in the old games. Also has a killer soundtrack, though I do still think Three House’s was better).

About to do a Hard Mode ironman run (no resets, permadeath on).

I've been thinking that it's extremely hard to have a more serious, non-bloated story in a Fire Emblem game without compromising the rest of the formula. The story can't force a player to confront the horrors of war when the fate of every character the player is likely to get attached to is in the player's hands instead of the story's. Fates, Three Houses, and, to an extent, Radiant Dawn tried to get around this by having playable characters fight each other, but also run into issues with the sheer size of the entire package (Fates being split across 2.5 cartridges, 3H repeating maps and the first 10 chapters, RD needing to extend to a 3rd tier of classes but still having difficulty keeping everyone on the same level curve).

I think that even having the party pushed back can lead to some friction because I seem to end up failing to change gears from "outnumbered 2:1 and nonetheless intended to make it with no losses" to "recognizing something's insurmountable without reading its stats." The moment that really springs to mind is right before the timeskip in my first playthrough of 3H. Because I was running Byleth as a gauntlet unit, I had access to a free healing Art and a weapon with infinite durability. Yet I was somehow supposed to be worried about a large horde of basic soldiers? I guess maybe if their unconscious bodies piled high enough to get over the walls... Engage can certainly struggle with this as well, yesterday I hit the chapter where the plot is very much not expecting Alear to be running with a particular Emblem.

Hide

Roy. Don't care what you put in your script, I still have a Focus Sash.

Ironically, I feel I'm actually paying more attention to the story in Engage than I did with 3H because I'm not getting frustrated at other aspects of the game as much.

 

[Coronis]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1646676756122705922

The man, the myth, the legend himself, Matthew Mercer, will be playing Ganondorf in the upcoming Zelda BOTW sequel, Tears of the Kingdom.

Nintendo usually doesn't get big names in the VO world like him in their flagship IP projects but getting to hear the man in a Zelda game of all things is a real treat.

Fun fact: Before Matt became known as a voice actor in cartoons and games and the Critical Role Dungeon Master which are what he's known for nowadays, the guy used to run his own webseries over a decade ago called There Will Be Brawl, where he played Ganondorf back then. Now he's actually getting to play Ganondorf for real in a proper Zelda game. Talk about coming full circle.

Hype is so real. Though as with BotW my preferred playthrough method will be Japanese VA with English subtitles.

 

[Candelia]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1646676756122705922

The man, the myth, the legend himself, Matthew Mercer, will be playing Ganondorf in the upcoming Zelda BOTW sequel, Tears of the Kingdom.

Nintendo usually doesn't get big names in the VO world like him in their flagship IP projects but getting to hear the man in a Zelda game of all things is a real treat.

Fun fact: Before Matt became known as a voice actor in cartoons and games and the Critical Role Dungeon Master which are what he's known for nowadays, the guy used to run his own webseries over a decade ago called There Will Be Brawl, where he played Ganondorf back then. Now he's actually getting to play Ganondorf for real in a proper Zelda game. Talk about coming full circle.

see I'd put the "WOOOOOOOO" gif everyone would love to see but unfortunately I cannot grab it
so take this instead

 

[Morkal]

I got RimWorld and its DLC on Steam the other day; does anyone here play it, and if you do, do you have any recommendations for a first time player?

 

[earl]

make a fridge. and a prison cell

 

[Sijih]

make a fridge. and a prison cell

so you have food and somewhere to stay while you play rim world 24/7?