Your video game hot take(s) thread

[Dalisclock]

Wait, you mean Odysseus DIDN'T need to grind before the Scylla & Charybdis boss fight? You mean he DIDN'T need to max out his dexterity before getting his hands on the bow? You mean he DIDN'T need to max out on charisma to charm Circe?

Christ, I've been reading The Odyssey all wrong.

You were not reading the Ubisoft edition, clearly.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

That's the biggest problem with the AC franchise. There's nothing left to do, and these games that should have not been in the franchise in the first place.

You've told the story you want to tell in your franchise, but the suits want to make more money. What do you do? The answer determines whether you're an artist or a manufacturer.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Since we're on Assassin's Creed. The newer games just look so... gamey. Which is an odd criticism I know, but it really does make the newer games (if you take away the graphics at least) look like lesser versions of the older games. If you put Unity and Valhalla side by side at like 480p, I would have probably guessed that Unity was the newer game.

The UI, when it's at full blast, makes the game look like an MMO or some shit. The animations look recycled yet clunkier at the same time. The combat looks plucked straight out of an above average mobile game. All of these factors combine to create a terrible looking game, or at the very least not a modern AAA game.

Is that just me? Because I know many people actually like the newer ones, which I don't have an opinion on as I've never played them, but I am surprised that people get excited whenever trailers drop. I just think they look that bad, I find myself cringing a little even.

 

[Dalisclock]

Since we're on Assassin's Creed. The newer games just look so... gamey. Which is an odd criticism I know, but it really does make the newer games (if you take away the graphics at least) look like lesser versions of the older games. If you put Unity and Valhalla side by side at like 480p, I would have probably guessed that Unity was the newer game.

The UI, when it's at full blast, makes the game look like an MMO or some shit. The animations look recycled yet clunkier at the same time. The combat looks plucked straight out of an above average mobile game. All of these factors combine to create a terrible looking game, or at the very least not a modern AAA game.

Is that just me? Because I know many people actually like the newer ones, which I don't have an opinion on as I've never played them, but I am surprised that people get excited whenever trailers drop. I just think they look that bad, I find myself cringing a little even.

It does take a lot from Open World/MMO games, yes. I can't compare too much because my mobile gaming is almost non-existent and is confined to Pocket Trains and Fallout Shelter when I feel like it but the new games aren't really like the old ones very much. There's a lot of Looter mechanics, cooldown bars/build bars, and the combat system is a bastardized copy of Souls Combat.

It still has the sneaky sneaky going but that's confined to hiding in vegetation mostly rather then hiding in crowds and in some cases the games fucking railroad you into fights(so stealth kills aren't possible to begin with) which annoys me. Like Origins, the best of the new games, had parts where you get forced into an area with a boss and you have no other option then to just fight him one on one and it's just not terribly AC-like(and in some cases it's really blatant).

They do fall into the open world trap hard though, where there's lots of stuff but little of it is really good or interesting. Which is a shame because the maps are very beautiful and fun to explore, but there's not a lot of good content in said maps.

You've told the story you want to tell in your franchise, but the suits want to make more money. What do you do? The answer determines whether you're an artist or a manufacturer.

Apparently the original AC plan went off the rails pretty early when the original director left Ubisoft/was forced out. Apparently the original plan was 5 games where Desmond would train to become a Super Assassin and take down the Templars, and well, Desmond did get 5 games but what we got and what seems to have been intended ended up being very different. It doesn't help Revelations was(despite being pretty good) clearly buying time for them to finish 3(and 3 still wasn't really done when it released, and still feels unfinished especially towards the later chapters of the game and some of the side content).

But the original Arc pretty much wrapped up at the end of 3, but hell, money is money and they're gonna ride that cash train until forever it seems.

 

[Hades]

Apparently the original AC plan went off the rails pretty early when the original director left Ubisoft/was forced out. Apparently the original plan was 5 games where Desmond would train to become a Super Assassin and take down the Templars, and well, Desmond did get 5 games but what we got and what seems to have been intended ended up being very different. It doesn't help Revelations was(despite being pretty good) clearly buying time for them to finish 3(and 3 still wasn't really done when it released, and still feels unfinished especially towards the later chapters of the game and some of the side content).

Its probably for the best that we never got a game about Desmond taking down the templars. He has always been the worst thing about the story. He's just such a boring character and him being a framing device wasn't really needed either.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

It still has the sneaky sneaky going but that's confined to hiding in vegetation mostly rather then hiding in crowds and in some cases the games fucking railroad you into fights(so stealth kills aren't possible to begin with) which annoys me. Like Origins, the best of the new games, had parts where you get forced into an area with a boss and you have no other option then to just fight him one on one and it's just not terribly AC-like(and in some cases it's really blatant).

That's one of the big things I hate about the new games. The moment I saw some YouTuber slit a sleeping guards throat, only for the guard to stand right up with half his HP left, I knew these games wouldn't be for me. AC's stealth and combat were never really that good, but at the very least they were satisfying.

Is the combat... good? Because in all the videos I've seen it just looks downright terrible. Which again, very confusing because I have friends who claim the combat is great.

They do fall into the open world trap hard though, where there's lots of stuff but little of it is really good or interesting. Which is a shame because the maps are very beautiful and fun to explore, but there's not a lot of good content in said maps.

The sad thing is that I don't mind pointless collectibles, as long as it's fun to get to them. And AC is supposed to be great at that, with all the freerunning mechanics and all. It's quite fun to be en route to a mission only to take a small detour and flip off a roof to get some random collectible.

 

[Dalisclock]

Its probably for the best that we never got a game about Desmond taking down the templars. He has always been the worst thing about the story. He's just such a boring character and him being a framing device wasn't really needed either.

He became a decent character by revelations(if you did the optional first person platforming missions) and 3, but considering that's 4 and 5 games into the series that's way too fucking long. Like he should have had a decent character by 2...at the latest.

That's one of the big things I hate about the new games. The moment I saw some YouTuber slit a sleeping guards throat, only for the guard to stand right up with half his HP left, I knew these games wouldn't be for me. AC's stealth and combat were never really that good, but at the very least they were satisfying.

Is the combat... good? Because in all the videos I've seen it just looks downright terrible. Which again, very confusing because I have friends who claim the combat is great.

Yeah, you had to invest in stealth kills to actually one hit kill people with the hidden blade/the spear. Actually, it's more complex then that because Origins made the Hidden Blade be an upgradable weapon(along with the bow, etc) so you had to invest quite a bit of resources into it to get it to one hit kill mode if someone wasn't at or below your level. Odyssey had assassination as a full skill tree to one hit kill with the spear(which acts the way the blade does) which you had to invest in. I haven't played valhalla so I can't comment on that.

I consider the combat acceptable. I'm also not terribly picky about melee combat though so take that as you will, but I found it good enough for what it is.

 

[Dalisclock]

So now I get to ramble about fun plane games since I've played a bunch of the Ace Combat games over the past year.

-Ace Combat 7 feels like the devs had a plan for the game and then went off in a different direction sometime during development. The first half of the game involves trigger landing in the penal squadron 444 for allegedly murdering the former president, then you get pardoned, the rest of the squadron gets shipped to Tyler island(without their planes for no discernable reason) and everyone fucking forgets you were ever in prison to begin with. Nobody ever brings up the fact you allegedly murdered Fmr. Pres Harling and there's no real resolution to the arc other then a passing mention a drone was responsible for killing Harling and they were gonna reopen his case (Apparently there was cut dialogue about an Osean Pilot killing Harling and letting Trigger take the blame but since they cut this out the whole plot threat feels very unresolved.) Late in the game there's a mention of Penal Squadrons turning on their captors but this doesn't show up in game and doesn't affect anything beyond a mention or two so it's unclear why they bothered to mention it at all.

It basically makes me think Trigger was supposed to stay in Spare Squadron for much if not all of the game but somewhere along the line they changed it. There's also the fact the war more or less seems to end after the capture of Farbanti but then you have 5 extra missions of "Erusean Civil War, Raid the castle, Take down the Arsenal bird and then the whole impending Robot war thing that gets inserted right there at the end" and makes the whole thing feels really all over the place. Also, Cosette's story doesn't really seem to matter much despite the amount of screentime she gets. I guess it's there so she can feel bad for being a propaganda shill for a regime that conquered most of the continent almost unprovoked, put a complete nutjob in charge of a massive nuclear submarine and then moved on to committing war crimes(including killing her doggo).

There's also a cutscene about midway through the game where Avril blackmails McKinsey to get a seat on his transport plane and then.....goes to tyler island anyway. So the entire cutscene feels pointless and it's unclear why it's even there. Why bother with the whole phone call and presumed Blackmail thing when it doesn't change anything? Fuck, on a related note, why send a bunch of pilots to tyler island without their planes when air support is apparently desperately needed considering how badly the situation on the ground is shown to be. They're just given rifles and....expected to do something? Who the hell uses fighter pilots like that? Hell, it was already established the reason they had the penal unit flying armed aircraft to begin with is because Osea is apparently so desperately short of pilots they're pulling convicts for duty(including the guy who allegedly killed the president WITH AN AIRPLANE!).

-Ace Combat Zero, despite having some cool missions, has a lot of filler for a game that isn't particularly long and apparently this is because of the Mercenary/Soldier/Knight routes, but even the "Choose your mission" missions don't really seem to mean much. Also, the frame story of "Reporter interviews a bunch of pilots to find the 'Demon Lord'"mostly feels like it doesn't really tell you much in the end. Especially since he never actually solves the question he set out to find "Who is the Demon Lord?" and the answer is "Uh.....nobody knows apparently" That guy who practically won the Belkan war by himself and prevented a nuclear attack? Nobody knows who the hell that guy was. Even Pixy, the guy who flew with him, never bothers to answer that question, it seems.

Also, it feels like a massive wasted opportunity that Ace Combat 5 had this big plot thread about Belkens infiltrated two superpowers to have them bleed each other dry in a major war, but instead of seeing the beginnings of that in Zero, you get this other storyline about Anarchist wanting to nuke everyone because....war sucks apparently? As amusing as it is to hear Pixy lose his shit near the end ranting about V2 and Borders, the World With No Boundaries thing never shows up again in any of the later games and has nothing apparently to do with the belken grey men or the events of AC5.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Wait, you mean Odysseus DIDN'T need to grind before the Scylla & Charybdis boss fight? You mean he DIDN'T need to max out his dexterity before getting his hands on the bow? You mean he DIDN'T need to max out on charisma to charm Circe?

Christ, I've been reading The Odyssey all wrong.

No no, all the grinding took place in The Iliad. He already had max stats by the time the Odyssey took place. It was more of an end game raid.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Exactly why I don't bother with the franchise anymore. The last good Ubisoft game I played was Rayman Legends for a reason.

Mario + Rabids is pretty good. You should give it a shot.

 

[Hades]

One more hot take regarding ancient Greece is that I'm somewhat irritated by all the glorification of Sparta in games. What was so great about Sparta? They barely influenced Greek culture and when they finally achieved hegemony the whole thing just instantly collapsed, and they became a glorified tourist attraction.

In Assassins Creed Odyssey Sparta is given a reverence that's really at odds with the story getting told. The return to Sparta is treated as Cassandra/Alexios' long overdue homecoming. But Sparta was the city that tried to kill both of them for the lulz, and their dirt bag father even pushed them off a cliff because he loved Sparta more than them. Despite this there's never really any dialogue option that allows the suggestion that the Eagle bearer is bothered by this and might resent Sparta for destroying their family.

 

[Gordon_4]

You've told the story you want to tell in your franchise, but the suits want to make more money. What do you do? The answer determines whether you're an artist or a manufacturer.

The answer determines whether or not you wish to keep your job. Pop art is art too, and honestly what they should have done with Assassin's Creed once the Desmond story was wrapped up (and kicked off a cliff because fuck that boring prick) is the same thing they did with Far Cry. Keep the name, change the setting but lose the framing device and go all in.

I mean holy shit a branching path RPG set in Ancient Greece? Sign me the fuck up. Let me at that shit. Just keep all that AssCreed lore shit well away from me.

 

[BrawlMan]

Mario + Rabids is pretty good. You should give it a shot.

I know it's good and I appreciate the offer, but I'm not getting it. I took a personal vow. So if it's got Ubisoft label on it, no buy. Other than Rayman Legends, though I already have a copy and got it for free on PSN back in 2017.

One more hot take regarding ancient Greece is that I'm somewhat irritated by all the glorification of Sparta in games.

That's easy. The Greek fantasy films of past had heavy influence on gaming. Then you get into God of War. And then finally...300.

​

Every action game that stylizes itself after Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, need a taunt button. Ninja Gaiden 4, if it ever comes out, gets a taunt button. I don't care if it does not makes sense for his characterization. He doesn't have to be hammy, but a nice cheeky Little tall ass and personality. Funny enough, the taunt button can work for someone like Ayane. God of War Ragnarok? Kratos better get a taunt button.

 

[Dalisclock]

One more hot take regarding ancient Greece is that I'm somewhat irritated by all the glorification of Sparta in games. What was so great about Sparta? They barely influenced Greek culture and when they finally achieved hegemony the whole thing just instantly collapsed, and they became a glorified tourist attraction.

In Assassins Creed Odyssey Sparta is given a reverence that's really at odds with the story getting told. The return to Sparta is treated as Cassandra/Alexios' long overdue homecoming. But Sparta was the city that tried to kill both of them for the lulz, and their dirt bag father even pushed them off a cliff because he loved Sparta more than them. Despite this there's never really any dialogue option that allows the suggestion that the Eagle bearer is bothered by this and might resent Sparta for destroying their family.

Sparta is festished by people who are impressed by the "Proud Warrior Race Guy" trope and apparently see Sparta as the embodiment of that.....and only that. They either don't know or care about the entire slave class that actually did a lot of the grunt work(Farming and such) that allowed the Spartans to call up their entire citizen class if need be. Of course, they also couldn't deploy the entire citizen army because the ever present fear of a slave revolt(Since the Helots outnumbered them), since the fear of uppity slaves seems to the gnawing fear in the minds of slave owners everywhere. Also interesting is the fact said slaves could not be bought or sold as they were considered communal property(They were assigned to individual masters but remained property of the state).

And of course the other facet of the "We are all soldiers" mentality was that Spartan children would go to be raised by the state, the Agoge, at the age of six, which most people now would shit bricks if their kids were mandated to go live in communal barracks to learn to be loyal citizens at any age.

Hell, there's not a lot of evidence Spartans were that badass(They won their fair share of battles, but were far from undefeated), rather then they gained a reputation for being badass after Thermopylae and then leaned into it because why wouldn't they. Thermopylae itself wasn't just the 300 and certainly wasn't meant to be a last stand but rather a delaying action(which of course, it became a last stand once their retreat was cut off by persian forces taking the mountain path).

 

[Specter Von Baren]

One more hot take regarding ancient Greece is that I'm somewhat irritated by all the glorification of Sparta in games. What was so great about Sparta? They barely influenced Greek culture and when they finally achieved hegemony the whole thing just instantly collapsed, and they became a glorified tourist attraction.

In Assassins Creed Odyssey Sparta is given a reverence that's really at odds with the story getting told. The return to Sparta is treated as Cassandra/Alexios' long overdue homecoming. But Sparta was the city that tried to kill both of them for the lulz, and their dirt bag father even pushed them off a cliff because he loved Sparta more than them. Despite this there's never really any dialogue option that allows the suggestion that the Eagle bearer is bothered by this and might resent Sparta for destroying their family.

Out of curiosity, how history have you read on the cultures of ancient Greece?

 

[Hades]

Out of curiosity, how history have you read on the cultures of ancient Greece?

More then the average bloke but not to a particularly huge degree. I've read some biographies of Greek statesmen, a pretty gigantic tome of the Pelopolesian War and the stuff about Greece you get for free when reading up on Roman history.

Still even the laymen can see that its Athens that primarily influenced Greek culture. Or at least the things that survived from Greek culture. Its typically the Athenian philosophers, playwrights and politicians that are remembered and who's legacies live on. You can also see this in mythology where the Athenian version is frequently the one that won out in the end. Sparta has a period of worshiping Aphrodite as a war goddess but this failed to become a thing for the rest of Greece. There's also some speculation that Hera was born as the main antagonist of Heracles partially as an Athenian snub towards Argos which was a city they didn't like at the time.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

More then the average bloke but not to a particularly huge degree. I've read some biographies of Greek statesmen, a pretty gigantic tome of the Pelopolesian War and the stuff about Greece you get for free when reading up on Roman history.

Still even the laymen can see that its Athens that primarily influenced Greek culture. Or at least the things that survived from Greek culture. Its typically the Athenian philosophers, playwrights and politicians that are remembered and who's legacies live on. You can also see this in mythology where the Athenian version is frequently the one that won out in the end. Sparta has a period of worshiping Aphrodite as a war goddess but this failed to become a thing for the rest of Greece. There's also some speculation that Hera was born as the main antagonist of Heracles partially as an Athenian snub towards Argos which was a city they didn't like at the time.

In which case I think the fact that so much of what we do know of Sparta comes from Athenians should indicate that they were great and influenecial enough to be recognized by the cultural winners of history in Greece and therefore deserving of some amount of respect and a place in history.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Knowledge? Sure.

Respect? Hahahaha, fuck no.

 

[Gyrobot]

Square Enix giving EGS the good titles should be a warning to Steam. But they are too busy letting in porn games to realize that they are going to lose their Japanese game market monopoly they thought they had.

 

[BrawlMan]

Square Enix giving EGS the good titles should be a warning to Steam. But they are too busy letting in porn games to realize that they are going to lose their Japanese game market monopoly they thought they had.

Dude, you've done this song and dance already enough times. Would you quit repeating yourself. You seem to forgot the part where epic games store is losing money. More than they can make back whenever they put games up for free. If you think Steam is going anywhere, you must be really delusional. You're beyond delusional at this point and just desperate. I ain't the biggest steam fan either, but they aren't going anywhere. You know something's wrong when EA's Origin store doing better than Epic Games store.