Post in this thread every time you play a new game and rate it, I'll start, currently playing Dread Dawn, pretty jank and honestly not that good but I'm desperate for more zombie games to wait until PZ 42 comes out. 6/10.
184 posts and 68 image replies omitted.>>47252The problem with GTA gameplay is that it is an open world sandbox only until a mission starts, when it turns into a tightly scriptes linear shooter/racing game. I wish the sandbox experience would be emphasized more, optional quests, factions, more open and difficult story missions to make use rewards you get from side contend, that kind of stuff.
And its never going to happen, because why would you bother making a complex game with interconnected systems when there is a billion mouthbreathers who are willing to shell out 80€ for a theme park experience.
>>47253that sounds nice in theory but personally i usually prefer an actual crafted narrative to a procedural slop one where everything feels incredibly shallow
>>47238>that it was so boringwrong, I thought it had some fun missions
>>47240I get what you are saying but I think its kinda of unfair to say all missions were like that
still I dont think I could play SA or VC from start to finish again, but I played IV's main campaign only once before like 15 years ago so there was some novelty to it when I played this dlc
I kind of dig IV's map too, I know its boring compared to the SA one but something about it is kind of charming to me, specially with mods that fix the absolute dogshit PC port
>>47252>there's an obvious appeal in driving fast cars, police chases, shooting people, accumulating shit loads of cash fasttrvke
flood detected
>>47262>Wondering if War Sails is worthI found sailing a nice addition, and TW has been adding more water content in recent patches.
>>47262Has CS2 improved since release? I heard it was a downgrade from the original, with fake simulations, poor performance, missing features etc.
There's a demo out for a game called Withering State and it looks promising. Very initial impression: Communist Suzerain
>>47263Cool. I was worried the map doesn't warrant sailing but it looks like the DLC adds inland seas and navigable rivers. I'll get it eventually
>>47264I couldn't tell you since I just got it, but Paradox took over the game from Colossal Order in the beginning of 2026 so people are hoping it can be salvaged.
It runs better than I expected but I did just build a new PC. With max graphics/simulation speed and 120k population, I'm currently getting lows of 35 FPS depending on what I'm looking at.
As for the simulation, it's not terribly convincing. I've had/have crippling traffic jams, huge service deficits and almost no specialized industries but nothing impedes my growth.
>>47267I hope it lets you play as a democratic reformer that's still communist, unlike all the CITK games
>>47271Is this some kind of distant descendent of the Reigns games?
>>47272No, unlike them it's actually good, it's a FMV game where you play as Wu Zetian, very woman coded but enjoyable in a camp way especially if you like China
Warframe and Skate are the only two games I enjoy these days.
Been playing Dragon Age 2 and left off a week or two ago in the middle of act 3 because I got crazy busy.
just finished gta vice city (PS2). it's janky af, but it's fun… But it's mostly janky af. And I probably only enjoyed it because I was using save states at the beggining of each mission, in order to not have to reload the game and drive around before doing each mission whenever I died
>>47313i didn't know about this game, looks interesting
>>47364>save states>for GTAanon I don't want to talk mad shit but like… people like you are the reason we need gatekeeping.
>>47365Bro who cares? It's his game. Let him enjoy it how he wants.
>>47364It's pretty fun but a lot better if you have a fellow faggot/s playing it with you so you can laugh about it together
>>47365mneh like modern gta games aren't saving at each checkpoint
>>47370oops forgot to write the rest.
like when you do make mistakes, its like oh duh of course. that makes sense. Logically sound. You cant really fail the lawyer sequences unless you run out of chips, which serves as the currency/pseudo-health bar which is pretty neat just typing it out. The main way of gaining chips is by selecting the correct dialogue chains and you can gamble them in key moments to up your chips even more.
Although I myself do not mind this, characters are written to be more contemporary and thus in line with fandom culture. You wont get a lot of depth from each character as it is drip-fed and often played for jokes/funny moments. But they are enjoyable characters to get you through the story. Although ive never played the game, its supposedly inspired by Phoenix Wright with zany characters you slowly unravel that has been satisfying for all three cases(there are going to be 5 in total but only the first two have been released as the prologue does not "count" as a case) .Cases are usually murder cases but the world itself is the character as various people in the world and their roles, beliefs, motivations, and political views unravel and entangle themselves neatly as each case progresses. Exchanges of dialogue centered around determining if the cybernetic of a working class mechanic was utilized for self-expression or if it was because it was produced by companies as necessary for on the site jobs are key moments in the trials, and the neat part is either scenario could be plausible so you have to really think before you lay down you cards.
the music is mostly open source but they made sure to emphasize their game is indie and individually produced. Not like multi-millionaire company produces indie aesthetic, but small team of friends producing bits and pieces of the game. There are original soundtracks composed for the game. If you're not familiar with Visual novel games, this would definitely be a linear visual novel with variants of static images for different character emotions and 3D rendered environments for that cyberpunk flare with neon colors. personally all the open source music is pretty good and i already mentioned it but I ADORE THE ARTSTYLE. first time an artstyle clicked for me in a way that i didnt know until i saw it that I wanted it.
>>47370>>47371I played the first episode and i'm both intrigued and somewhat disappointed.
The story didn't strictly impress me, yet it's a very solid set up. Morgan seems like both a fun character and someone you rarely see as a protagonist, so i would really like to see how she is utilized and plays off the future suspects. Gameplay was a mixed bag, because everything was so easy and tempting to savescum. Still i can see future episodes making more creative use of the gambling mechanic and thus making it harder to savescum without genuinely minmaxing.
>I ADORE THE ARTSTYLEThis is where i need to disagree the hardest. The 3d environment mixed with 2d characters invites comparisons to Danganronpa, which i see as extremely unfavorable. The smooth, washed-out environments feel non-specific and lifeless, like an empty Garry's Mod map, clashing with the decent character art. I don't know if this a generational thing, but i absolutely cannot stand the plasticy blender look of many modern indie games.
On a side note, camera movement is extremely jarring and a lot of other individual ui elements feel super scuffed. Why would i want to look at the diegetic navigation device phone from the side instead of the front like a normal menu! Again Spike Chunsoft did all of this right from the very start. The last i played was V3, so i'm probably going to start playing the fangames now.
>its not chudded out like Val-hall-a Could you elaborate in what way it's chudcoded specifically. I was getting more of a strong lolbert current, because of the way it glorified living in literal Night City – Chiba, Japan.
>>47375unfortunately i dont think the base formula will change. in fact it might even get easier especially in high rolling mode which doesnt really prevent savescumming. you get lots and lots of chips from winning. Of course they could balance this by making the stakes even higher but for the first two episodes if you've accumulated a lot of chips, even if you dont save scum you're basically god mode. I think high roller mode should not allow a "save file" at all unless you fully complete the episode.
oh i havent played danganronpa . i think that waS one of the games they are inspired by it. agree w your critiques tho.
>lolbert currentyeah its apologetic because of all the tech and stuff and its implied benefits. Maybe i was a bit heavy handed with non-chudded out but i think thats just a problem with cyberpunk in general, the glorification of night city. at best it takes on an attitude "sigh thats horrible but what can you do right?". I wouldnt say its a strong lolbert current, I think the writing, especially in news articles gives it a decent lefty spin. Not in depth of course but communism, anarchism etc does exist.
I assume you're done with the prologue right? Although dont expect too much, the first two episodes should shake off a little of that lolbert flavor I'd hope/if i remember correctly. At worst it makes the capitalist adjacent characters into quirky fun villains.
>>47383>Maybe i was a bit heavy handed with non-chudded out but i think thats just a problem with cyberpunk in generalI was asking about valhalla. If anything the presentation seems liberal in the "sigh thats horrible but…" way you mentioned.
>thats just a problem with cyberpunkThe game seems somewhat atypical to cyberpunk, with the government reportedly "spending a lot of money" and running the justice system you interact with. It's even made me start doubting, if the megacorporations are really the ones in charge!
>I assume you're done with the prologue right?I am. I think it would actually fit if they made Morgan a total liberal
machiavellian wet blanket, who constantly gets dunked on by others. I'm probably going to wait for them to finish all of the episodes until i get a copy.
I've been replaying demons' souls and oh man, I forgot how good it was. I know FromSoft already had experience with action RPGs and dark fantasy settings but it's so hard to conceive how much they got right the first time. It also seemingly has a lot more personality than the other souls games? Like the later games focused a lot more on being challenging, whereas this game was willing to compromise on difficulty to lend the world some credence. Like when you fight phalanx, and you remove every single little blob, and then it starts running away from you? You can even hide from phalanx, and it starts timidly moving away from its corner. The other games would just give it a phase 2 moveset or something. And like I guess Tower Knight is a trick that you can only pull once in your lifetime: the entirety of Boletaria 1-2 is trying to evade the fucking dragon then dealing with a small gauntlet in a small area, which is a pretty steep climb in difficulty vs 1-1. Your reward? A seemingly invincible gigantic knight AND a barrage of archers. It's meant to be totally demoralizing for first time players. I think that sort of conceptual stuff is lost on dark souls, focusing more on it being mechanically hard and bosses having lore baggage or whatever, instead of thinking of what the player might be feeling when playing the game.
I've been playing Casualties: Unknown lately. especially the multiplayer mod, with some /v/ anons. it's a roguelike cave exploration/crafting game with a very detailed medical system. there are traps that exercise said medical system by inducing horrible injuries on the little furry creature you control
>>38159I can also recommend Timberborn
Played Shogun 2 again. Remembered why I fucking loathe the late game. The AI somehow gets past my naval blockade on both sides of Honshu and lands five armies on Hokkaido, my economix heartland, with atleast one more on the way in the fog (I don't have the heart to pass more turns to see how many they really have sent). Half my income came from there, campaign is over. My armies were plowing their way through their heartlands with Kyoto only a few turns away, no chance to return in time. Of course AI never gaf about money so they can lose all their cities no worries and still have the money for an invasion like this. Perfect synced landing without any visibility even, I checked back and they had zero agents or ships to even scout it out for tens of turns. Fuck my chud life.
>>47255When has GTA ever been "procedural slop"? I haven't played San Andreas in nearly a decade and I still remember every nook and cranny of the map. If anything, "crafted narratives" are what the series is consistently worst at.
>>47561Total War games are most fun with maxed out battle difficulty, but keeping campaign at normal, otherwise it turns into a bullshit slog where AI conjures infinite full stack armies out of thin air.
Picked up Derail Valley during some train themed sale on Steam recently. It's a train simulator with a career mode a la Euro Truck Simulator or SnowRunner. It's pretty fun but I don't think there's a ton of replay value here unless you're a true train autist. Now I can't fault a train sim for being heavy on the train simming but it doesn't help that the map is quite small and you "beat" the economy side of the game fairly quickly. I'd give it a 7/10 for doing what it does well but maybe not my cup of tea
>>47253i think you're describing gta online lol
anyway it's clear that GTA's game design is now painfully outdated, it's been 20 years and it has barely changed
>>47594yeah aerobic condition in general would be really useful for the near future, if only because being fit makes you less likely to get sick, but being able to outrun pursuers and stuff would come in handy i suppose.
>>47567Over 10 years with no new release does that lol
i just finished cod 5 and it was kinda better than i expected, i thought it would be like every other cod
>>47594Parkour is useless you are never going to outrun an FPV drone.
Want to play or pre-order some new games but goddamn do these Chinese games all look the fucking same
It makes sense because they're target audience are people like Asmongold fans who don't know the first thing about making game
>>47567>is now painfully outdated, it's been 20 years and it has barely changedIt's the exact opposite issue, they had the formula right in the 00s and ruined it afterwards because they wanted to make prestige TV shows in video game form. The most insecure cultural industry in history naturally rewarded them for it.
>>47567>>47727You are both wrong, GTA gameplay formula was way ahead of its time, and fucking sucks. It was a fancy skinner box even back in GTA3/VC era, with San Andreas being a little more free form. It is brandead, you follow objective markers and do exactly what the game tells you to do, with no space for thought left anywhere. That is why the series became such a juggernaut, by being the lower common denominator of gaming. The series has a style, decent writing, but gameplay is shit, it has always been shit, you just never noticed because you played it when you were 12
>>47739>you follow objective markers and do exactly what the game tells you to doThis is so hilariously reductive (the game "tells you what to do" by giving you… objectives, to say nothing of how this implies entire genres like rhythm games are illegitimate since they don't involve strategy) that it could only come from someone who's trying really hard to hate the series more than they actually do. It's also wrong on a literal level, as there are multiple missions in 3/VC/SA that you can cheese through lateral thinking.
>>47743>this implies entire genres like rhythm games are illegitimateIt really doesnt. GTA is not a rhythm game, it is supposed to be an open world sandbox, you need freedom for that to work. Otherwise what are you left with other than mediocre racing game mixed with flat out bad 3th person shooter? There is fun to be had while free roaming, but the mission design, which is where you will spend most of your playtime, is on par with something like CoD, a heavily scripted tunnel, which is fine for CoD game because that plays to strengths of its mechanics, but not to an open world sandbox.
>could only come from someone who's trying really hard to hate the seriesI really dont. Played SA and VC as a kid. Liked them a lot. But when I attempted to replay them (and GTA3) years later, even nostalgia glasses could not hide how flawed the series is.
>>47383I don't think Valhalla is chudded out as much as it's ironic in both its bleakness ($40 ramen cups) and hope (in humanity + other ie sentient human-esque robots etc.). I think folks are selling the game short for the range of the human condition that it showcases. It's like whoever is deciding to relax w/ the game feels better about either not having (or actually having) $40 ramen cups while getting to connect with individuals in a world w/ many parallels to our own.
The point of the game isn't to have you be someone grand. You may be changing lives but you are just a bartender. Ofc, any bartender can move mountains, but that is beyond the scope of the game. If there is anything in the world worth changing that you see in the writing, then to start you'd need to be able to empathize and have real conversations with people. Plenty of people have complex goals and relationships that prevent them from being activated and you're one of them in this game, like we all are for periods of our lives as politically conscious people.
I think this point would be missed if they made active politics the goal of the game, rather than a characteristic of the world that imposes itself on you occasionally.
>>47779>I think this point would be missed if they made active politics the goal of the gameNah, the game endorses plenty of politics. Only in the mind of its liberal writers is it not political. There is literally a dialogue between jill and her boss somewhere about the lax laws in night city enabling extensive human experimentation and it's said this led to better healthcare being than anywhere else despite private ownership; pure lolbert wank!
>>47799Anon, where does "active politics being the goal of the game" mean that there is "no politics"?
I don't think it's contradictory at all regarding your point about lax laws. You *could* have better healthcare in terms of technological advancement by way of human experimentation + private healthcare, but just as much you'd live in $40 ramen corrupt society with ridiculous rent. There is no reason to believe this is an endorsement of said society as much as it's world building.
I finished Demon's Souls and now I'm playing Bloodborne on shadPS4 since you can do that now, it plays really good, but I dunno, even though this game is more demons souls than the other souls games, I think from soft never quite managed to do whatever they managed to do in DeS. My final game to complete my FromSoft cycle is probably going to be Shadow Tower Abyss, since it seems like it shares lots of aesthetic DNA with DeS
>>47803>self-dubbed(by the author) as cyberpuke aesthetic.damn so cruelty squad is so influential it's now inspiring small aesthetic currents
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