Ghost of Sushi Gameplay Reveal

[happyninja42]

Honestly it's a real sad injustice that it got so 'mehed' - the character acting/animations are incredible, the characters are very compelling and seem very true in a post-traumatic world, and the countryside is gorgeous.
Gameplay is pretty addictive and tense.
It seems to have been summarily dismissed for no real reason other than some fashionable prejudice against it at the time.
Although I only got it relatively recently on sale, so maybe it was more bugged at launch and that didn't do it any favours.
Still the lukewarm reviews seem baffling to me. A lot of quality talent and work went into it.

Well, I can't speak for the larger gamer base's opinion on it, but frankly I was only interested in it because of Sam. When I saw the actual gameplay clips, it didn't seem to be more than another zombie survival sandbox, but when I saw Sam was the protagonist, the game instantly had like a +5 on my interest meter. Which I'm fine with quite frankly, I have no problem with that genre, I love it in fact. But, it didn't seem to be doing anything different enough to make me want to actually go spend money on it. My usual rule of thumb, for new releases is to let them come out, and give it a few months where sites like this, and clips on youtube, can make their opinions, and see what the general consensus is. Depending on how positive/negative that overall take is, I might decide to buy it early on, before it's old enough to just get a flat discount. If it just...doesn't really get much talk at all, which was my take-away from Days Gone, it just...fades from memory. I don't think about it, figure it was just a "meh" title, and maybe pick it up years down the road on a steam sale or something.

Problem is that can be said for probably thousands of games for me. Mild interest, nothing really huge to make me go "ok yes I MUST get that one, it speaks to me!" and then I go about my day, doing things, thinking about more important stuff. I might be reminded of it, like with Days Gone, in a thread like this, when it's casually mentioned offhand, in a thread about a different game, and go "oh yeah...that game...I remember kinda being interested in it...huh..." and then promptly forgetting it again, until 3 different people all quoted me about that very fact, which has brought it more to the forefront of my mind. But aside from things like that, yeah it just kind of didn't seem like it was doing much. I actually had my wife check the price on it since she was at home, and could see what it was currently running on PS store. seems full price currently, or at the very least more than I care to spend on it at this time.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

What do you mean by process? The soul eater fight itself? Because I never had much touble with those fights. Even if you don't have the projectile parry it's pretty easy to time your dodges and axe throws in between attacks. That area itself even has pillars to hide behind.

The dog room is hard just as most of the rooms in that area are hard. And the dogs will kill you very quickly if you don't make it your goal to kill them as fast as possible. But I can't say they ever one-shotted me. The dogs also stagger less with the axe then they do with bare handed attacks, as well as the latter obviously filling up their stun meter a lot faster.

And yes, the beginning hour has spoogey enemies... if you totally neglect the freeze throw. Once you get beefier there's little reason to use it much, but at the start it makes all the difference. You can shatter them against the walls, you can kick them into other enemies for a slow-down effect, or just leave them frozen to temporarily take them out of the fight while you focus on other enemies.

The only time I ever felt underleveled was with the realm tears.

The whole hitting his chest X amount of times and running up to him when he falls over. I think before that it took maybe 3 times of doing that do kill those guys and then it taking barely any health for that one, plus it one-shotted me if a made a single mistake. I know the cheese methods like hiding behind a pillar, I don't find that fun. Bayonetta on its hardest difficulty is harder than GOW and it doesn't have to inflate enemy health to do that.

It depends on when you do the content. I got one-shotted by the Soul thing, by the dogs, and probably a few others that I don't recall anymore. Even the freeze throw is inconsistent as well.

Yeah, I didn't get that from the combat at all. Moves worked fine and connected fine. The only move that could sometimes miss was the executioner's cleave, and it's meant to be more of a high risk high reward kind of attack. And once I started air-juggling them with Atreus I barely ever missed with that move as well.

In GoW1 you could launch the gorgons and the minotaurs, except not always. This was likely done to avoid easily spamming the attack and just keeping them airborne indefinitely, but it was an inconsistency. And lot of deaths were had due to me launching a gorgon, but the gorgon staying on the ground, yet I flew into the air and then got stone-gazed and shattered on the floor. I think in GoW3 you could way more easily launch them and together with the chain hook/shoulder rush they became an absolute joke.

Here's Matthewmatosis' GOW4 video going over all the little things that are wrong with the game and I experienced pretty much all of them. I just skimmed through a here and there today and I totally forgot that whether attacks are blockable or not change based on level difference so the same enemy's attacks change while your attacks affect them differently. Even the core design of the action combat wasn't very well thought out with the whole cooldown system. It kinda has a MOBA-esque feel due to the cooldowns and you just do your burst damage at the start of every combat encounter vs just being able to do it once in a while. An easy fix to that is charging special attacks up via using the basic attacks, which could also allow easily spammable things like the axe throw or the boy's arrow to not build the meter to reward players for getting better at the combat system. I played GOW1 on PS2, that was awhile ago, I'd never claim it's some great combat system but it was fun at least.

Idk why you always say that. It goes down when you attack and take poise damage. You have to be neutral (not guarding) to refill it faster. That’s really all it needs to do for these games.

I know how the stamina system works, it doesn't make it a good stamina system though. The stamina system just acts as a DPS limiter instead of a stamina system. For example, you only need a sliver a stamina to dodge even though a dodge normally takes say 25 dodge points (out of say a 100 pool). Whereas in Monster Hunter, you need 25 dodge points left to dodge and if you don't have them, you can't dodge until you do. So Souls just turns into a game of dodge, mash R1 until the stamina limits you, dodge back out a millisecond later and repeat the process. It doesn't make the player actually manage the resource and actually consider their moves while also allowing From to basically not have to properly implement stuff like enemy super armor or staggering like other action games have to.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I know how the stamina system works, it doesn't make it a good stamina system though. The stamina system just acts as a DPS limiter instead of a stamina system. For example, you only need a sliver a stamina to dodge even though a dodge normally takes say 25 dodge points (out of say a 100 pool). Whereas in Monster Hunter, you need 25 dodge points left to dodge and if you don't have them, you can't dodge until you do. So Souls just turns into a game of dodge, mash R1 until the stamina limits you, dodge back out a millisecond later and repeat the process. It doesn't make the player actually manage the resource and actually consider their moves while also allowing From to basically not have to properly implement stuff like enemy super armor or staggering like other action games have to.

So maybe that last dodge isn't possible in MH..Ok...?

You're comparing two completely different games as if they should be running on the same design philosophy, when they have no obligation to at all. Anyways, if you literally run yourself out of stamina in either game you have to wait for it to refill. You can only start quickly running again if your stamina hasn't completely depleted. One game exaggerates the effects of an empty gauge more than the other. If Souls games let you dodge with a sliver left, so what? The stamina system is built to facilitate the flow of the gameplay. MH is slower and more deliberate, SoulsBorne is more action-oriented. Poise can still be broken if an attack empties the gauge, which is appropriate, but rolling into an empty gauge won't make the player fall over winded because it simply doesn't fit the intended design. There are plenty gamier ways to manipulate stamina in MH than SoulsBorne games anyways, so I don't see the issue of what should or shouldn't be deemed "acceptable" here.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

So maybe that last dodge isn't possible in MH..Ok...?

You're comparing two completely different games as if they should be running on the same design philosophy, when they have no obligation to at all. Anyways, if you literally run yourself out of stamina in either game you have to wait for it to refill. You can only start quickly running again if your stamina hasn't completely depleted. One game exaggerates the effects of an empty gauge more than the other. If Souls games let you dodge with a sliver left, so what? The stamina system is built to facilitate the flow of the gameplay. MH is slower and more deliberate, SoulsBorne is more action-oriented. Poise can still be broken if an attack empties the gauge, which is appropriate, but rolling into an empty gauge won't make the player fall over winded because it simply doesn't fit the intended design. There are plenty gamier ways to manipulate stamina in MH than SoulsBorne games anyways, so I don't see the issue of what should or shouldn't be deemed "acceptable" here.

I didn't say Souls has to do exactly what Monster Hunter does, I was listing it as an example of how to make stamina matter. Or there's Dragon's Dogma, Shadow of the Colossus, and Breath of the Wild that have stamina matter with regards to climbing mainly. Nioh has a stamina system where player skill is rewarded by giving you back your stamina. In Souls, you couldn't care less about managing your stamina and the literal point of leveling endurance is to be able to mash R1 an extra time or 2 before getting gassed. All the mechanic does is artificially lengthen every fight, other action games have much better ways of stopping the player from spamming attacks than just being like "you can't attack anymore, wait 5 seconds". Stamina only directly affects shields (which aren't even in BB) and just like you said a post back (and that I was fully aware of already) that you lower your shield between enemy hits to massively regain stamina so what's the point of it all anyway? Whereas Sekiro's stamina system has a point to it.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The whole hitting his chest X amount of times and running up to him when he falls over. I think before that it took maybe 3 times of doing that do kill those guys and then it taking barely any health for that one, plus it one-shotted me if a made a single mistake. I know the cheese methods like hiding behind a pillar, I don't find that fun. Bayonetta on its hardest difficulty is harder than GOW and it doesn't have to inflate enemy health to do that.

It depends on when you do the content. I got one-shotted by the Soul thing, by the dogs, and probably a few others that I don't recall anymore. Even the freeze throw is inconsistent as well.

I don't think I've spent more than 2 or 3 minutes tops on any of the stone guys, and that's counting the ones accompanied by other enemies. Spamming the throw itself already brings their health down quickly enough. Simply yo-yoing your axe the instant it connects with the weak spot gives you a good 3 to 4 hits everytime, and together with the projectile parry they're dispatched relatively quickly. Again, if you're not having fun with the combat you're probably not going to try and explore every option, but the game certainly gives you the means of fighting them on very even ground.

And the freeze throw becomes less viable as enemies get stronger, but that's only if you're using the default throw and haven't acquired the upgraded skill yet. And by that time you'll have enough skills to chain together that you don't even need the freeze throw anymore. That move is only really good early on when you don't have any real skills yet.

Here's Matthewmatosis' GOW4 video going over all the little things that are wrong with the game and I experienced pretty much all of them. I just skimmed through a here and there today and I totally forgot that whether attacks are blockable or not change based on level difference so the same enemy's attacks change while your attacks affect them differently.

The game makes it perfectly clear though when attacks are unblockable (red), when they'll knock your shield back if you don't parry (yellow), and when they're no problem. Yes, sometimes what was initially a yellow attack becomes a red attack with a later, stronger version of the same enemy, but a) that never happens mid-fight, and b) stronger enemies are easily recognizable by either their red or grey colour. So your first encounter with red or grey Draugr might take you by surprise, but once you know what the deal is nothing prevents you from properly corresponding the colour with the appropriate reaction to it.

Even the core design of the action combat wasn't very well thought out with the whole cooldown system. It kinda has a MOBA-esque feel due to the cooldowns and you just do your burst damage at the start of every combat encounter vs just being able to do it once in a while. An easy fix to that is charging special attacks up via using the basic attacks, which could also allow easily spammable things like the axe throw or the boy's arrow to not build the meter to reward players for getting better at the combat system.

No, the cooldown isn't optimal. It's never a very good idea to have very fast, hectic combat and to then couple that with a mechanic that requires the player to wait. It's less to do with it being exploitable (every combat system in every game has a cheap exploit) and more to do with it diverting the player's attention.

I played GOW1 on PS2, that was awhile ago, I'd never claim it's some great combat system but it was fun at least.

And that's how it is. If it's fun you're less bothered by the inconsistencies. And what's fun will differ from person to person. I don't find any of Platinum's combat systems fun, despite them apparently being the best at it. I'll take God of War '18 's combat, or heck, even Bully's combat over Bayonetta or Revengeance any day of the week.

 

[Kwak]

Problem is that can be said for probably thousands of games for me. Mild interest, nothing really huge to make me go "ok yes I MUST get that one, it speaks to me!" and then I go about my day, doing things, thinking about more important stuff.

True, I have several games like that - but too much else to finish to justify getting them at any other time than at at least 50% off.
To whet your appetite for that time, some fairer video reviews...

Just cause 4 is incredibly cheap right now.

 

[BrawlMan]

And that's how it is. If it's fun you're less bothered by the inconsistencies. And what's fun will differ from person to person. I don't find any of Platinum's combat systems fun, despite them apparently being the best at it. I'll take God of War '18 's combat, or heck, even Bully's combat over Bayonetta or Revengeance any day of the week.

I will admit this, Bayonetta 1 has not aged well with its washed out visuals, or the insa-death QTES. Though I always hated the QTES even on release date. That, and ranking system I had a problem with where you had to backtrack to other fights, or complete certain challenges if you wanted a perfect rank. It's still there in Bayo 2, but not as infuriating, and most of the challenges are less tedious and easier to do compared to the first game. The fact there is no restart checkpoint for either games, but there is one for Vanquish, Revengeance, and Transformers Devastation is infuriating. I enjoyed God of War 4's combat, but I would not put it above Bayo or Revengeance. Okay, GoW4 technically does weapon switching better than both (more so Rising), because you have to go in to a menu, but Kratos sits still when switching. I know there is an exploit to prevent Kratos from standing completely still, but most people don't know about it. And then you get stuff like Devil May Cry which is in its own league. God of War 4's combat is better than DmC 2013 (the vanilla version at least. The DE edition would be an unfair comparison as that was a fix it game), No More Heroes 1 & 2 (love them both for their gameplay and story), Killer Is Dead (still a fun game with good), and Asura's Wrath (which is more focused on the story and spectacle; the game play is average, but has variety in scenarios), and whatever Assassin's Creed Ubisoft pumps out, or the usual bullshit Koei Tecmo dumps out with its Dynasty Warrior games or spin-offs.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I didn't say Souls has to do exactly what Monster Hunter does, I was listing it as an example of how to make stamina matter. Stamina matters regardless of how it is implemented.

Or there's Dragon's Dogma, Shadow of the Colossus, and Breath of the Wild that have stamina matter with regards to climbing mainly. Cool? Nioh has a stamina system where player skill is rewarded by giving you back your stamina. Bloodborne has regain on health, which is even better than stamina rewards as the risk/reward payoff is greater.

In Souls, you couldn't care less about managing your stamina and the literal point of leveling endurance is to be able to mash R1 an extra time or 2 before getting gassed. I sure as hell care every time I end up eating a one shot because I took one too many swings, or blocked an attack that ate through my poise.

All the mechanic does is artificially lengthen every fight, other action games have much better ways of stopping the player from spamming attacks than just being like "you can't attack anymore, wait 5 seconds". FTR, higher stamina pools also shorten fights, not lengthen them.

Stamina only directly affects shields (which aren't even in BB) and just like you said a post back (and that I was fully aware of already) that you lower your shield between enemy hits to massively regain stamina so what's the point of it all anyway? It affects both offensive and defensive aspects of combat to varying degrees, and the point of it is to learn how the game implements it to stay alive as much as possible. Good luck trying to spam with most of DS3’s bosses. BlackFlame Friede in particular laughs at spammers misfortune and stupidity.

Whereas Sekiro's stamina system has a point to it. It’s a posture system, and it’s directly tied to guarding; pretty much flipping SoulsBorne’s idea of stamina on its head.

Responses above.
Idk why you’re always so hung up on how “wrong” SoulsBorne games are next to how x or y game does it...I guess because they’re popular and get high acclaim that you don’t agree with, but to each their in own.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I don't think I've spent more than 2 or 3 minutes tops on any of the stone guys, and that's counting the ones accompanied by other enemies. Spamming the throw itself already brings their health down quickly enough. Simply yo-yoing your axe the instant it connects with the weak spot gives you a good 3 to 4 hits everytime, and together with the projectile parry they're dispatched relatively quickly. Again, if you're not having fun with the combat you're probably not going to try and explore every option, but the game certainly gives you the means of fighting them on very even ground.

And the freeze throw becomes less viable as enemies get stronger, but that's only if you're using the default throw and haven't acquired the upgraded skill yet. And by that time you'll have enough skills to chain together that you don't even need the freeze throw anymore. That move is only really good early on when you don't have any real skills yet.

The game makes it perfectly clear though when attacks are unblockable (red), when they'll knock your shield back if you don't parry (yellow), and when they're no problem. Yes, sometimes what was initially a yellow attack becomes a red attack with a later, stronger version of the same enemy, but a) that never happens mid-fight, and b) stronger enemies are easily recognizable by either their red or grey colour. So your first encounter with red or grey Draugr might take you by surprise, but once you know what the deal is nothing prevents you from properly corresponding the colour with the appropriate reaction to it.

No, the cooldown isn't optimal. It's never a very good idea to have very fast, hectic combat and to then couple that with a mechanic that requires the player to wait. It's less to do with it being exploitable (every combat system in every game has a cheap exploit) and more to do with it diverting the player's attention.

And that's how it is. If it's fun you're less bothered by the inconsistencies. And what's fun will differ from person to person. I don't find any of Platinum's combat systems fun, despite them apparently being the best at it. I'll take God of War '18 's combat, or heck, even Bully's combat over Bayonetta or Revengeance any day of the week.

The amount of damage you do to enemies is very much dependent on the level difference. If you do an encounter way too early, any enemy can become a huge damage sponge regardless of being a stone guy or a dog (outside of the very beginning of the game, player experience is no longer anywhere near 1:1 depending what content you do at what time). A GOW game shouldn't have that aspect to it. Almost no games should have that aspect to it unless narrative-wise, you really are a level 1 nobody at the start. And even then, it should be like a dragon one-shotting you and not a level 10 rat (just cuz numbers), it should make some kind of sense. A dog one-shotting Kratos at any point in the game is stupid.

I'd like to be able to learn the enemy attacks and be able to turn off the indicators like how you can play the Batman games with counter prompt turned off. It actually can change mid-fight if you're playing the on the hardest difficulty and the enemy levels up.

The cooldowns more than anything make the combat feel far more repetitive than it should be. What reason do you not have to do your highest burst damage at the start? I wasn't implying to remove exploits as it's kinda impossible to do (players will sniff out the cheese) but you can at least reward players for playing certain ways. That's what devs that are known for great combat systems do things. Bayonetta's dodge offset lets players continue combos after a dodge but you don't have utilize it to win but it makes it much faster to win.

GOW1 may have some inconsistencies (I don't recall any and I played it on God mode, couldn't beat the clone battle though) but very few in comparison to GOW4. I didn't have to block and dodge like every attack in GOW1 because enemies are going to slide across the floor and land hits. I didn't go into every fight unleashing all my powerful magic knowing that it would be replenished for the next fight. I knew what a gorgon or minotaur was capable of after my first fight with one.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Responses above.
Idk why you’re always so hung up on how “wrong” SoulsBorne games are next to how x or y game does it...I guess because they’re popular and get high acclaim that you don’t agree with, but to each their in own.

I couldn't care less about popularity/optics/agendas. I could easily say Monster Hunter is far more popular than Souls games so it "proves" I'm right even though in reality popularity has no barring.

Stamina (or anything) can not matter. Stamina in actual combat in Dragon's Dogma doesn't matter. Leveling the Resistance stat in DS1 doesn't matter.

A Ki Pulse ability in Bloodborne would make the game joke easy (outside of boss battles) far more than what the health regain allows for.

When are you ever getting one-shotted because you ran out of stamina? Sure, you may get one-shotted because you stay in there too long getting greedy or got stuck in an animation. But saying you get one-shotted because the milisecond you have to wait to dodge away is extremely low percentage.

If you didn't have any stamina limitation, you'd be able to R1 mash every trash mob enemy to death in one go. The freaking short sword of the big ass hammer in BB staggers like every enemy. Boss battles are really the only fights where you can't stagger the enemy infinitely.

Sekiro's posture system flips Souls stamina system on it's head? Really? I guess, it technically does because posture is super important in Sekiro and stamina isn't important at all in Souls so it does flip it on its head. To bad Sekiro thought it was a Souls game and copied Souls design when it in fact is more similar to Shadow of the Colossus than a Souls game.

 

[Ezekiel]

Responses above.
Idk why you’re always so hung up on how “wrong” SoulsBorne games are next to how x or y game does it...

Man, it's like I left a conversation four years ago and started listening to the continuation of that exact same conversation four years later. Like it was frozen in time.

Anyway, I found the combat in the old God of War games better too. Including the camera, which I found cumbersome in the new one. Have to adjust it constantly. Several times, he auto-targeted enemies I didn't want him to, which got me hurt.

 

[Ezekiel]

I laughed because Yoshi is being Yoshi wherever possible.

I haven’t really looked into current 3D audio but Tempest Engine apparently aims to go beyond stuff like Atmos. Time will tell.

Anyways on topic, a survey for anyone planning to get the game.

Well, experience with sound in games has taught me to temper expectations. Pretty sure the reason most games have subtitles on by default is because the devs are so bad at mixing sound. There are SO MANY games in which it's difficult to understand characters, including in controlled cutscenes.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The amount of damage you do to enemies is very much dependent on the level difference. If you do an encounter way too early, any enemy can become a huge damage sponge regardless of being a stone guy or a dog (outside of the very beginning of the game, player experience is no longer anywhere near 1:1 depending what content you do at what time). A GOW game shouldn't have that aspect to it. Almost no games should have that aspect to it unless narrative-wise, you really are a level 1 nobody at the start. And even then, it should be like a dragon one-shotting you and not a level 10 rat (just cuz numbers), it should make some kind of sense. A dog one-shotting Kratos at any point in the game is stupid.

In the older games there were also enemies that could kill you faster and somehow had more damaging attacks than certain Bosses. This is nothing new and is present in most games that have Boss fights. In GoW1 the elite satyrs could be harder to fight than Ares himself.

If you know how to chain together combos while just hammering the square button at the same time there's no enemy that you can't take down within a minute. Seriously, Frost Rush into Whirling Storm, topped off by Executioner's Cleave, along with Arteus' arrows, destroys fools. Something the Matthewmatosis video forgot to mention when he talked about how Leviathan's Fury (sprint, then R2) was badly designed because it knocked enemies out of your reach, eventhough Whirling Storm perfectly crosses that gap.

Also, dogs have never one-shotted me in this game, unless maybe in Give Me God of War, so I still don't know how you accoplished that.

I'd like to be able to learn the enemy attacks and be able to turn off the indicators like how you can play the Batman games with counter prompt turned off.

Well... that's just not how the game works, and it never claimed any different.

It actually can change mid-fight if you're playing the on the hardest difficulty and the enemy levels up.

Obviously, but that's the all-gloves-are-off mode, where it specifically tells you that things are going to get really tough. But you didn't play that mode on your first run, I'm sure.

The cooldowns more than anything make the combat feel far more repetitive than it should be. What reason do you not have to do your highest burst damage at the start? I wasn't implying to remove exploits as it's kinda impossible to do (players will sniff out the cheese) but you can at least reward players for playing certain ways. That's what devs that are known for great combat systems do things. Bayonetta's dodge offset lets players continue combos after a dodge but you don't have utilize it to win but it makes it much faster to win.

In complete agreement. I had little issues with the cooldowns, but a far better system would be to tie it to a particular sequence of events or combo chain that's harder to do. You can still have the cooldowns, but make it 1/5 the speed of recovery and have a certain combo chain increase the recovery rate.

GOW1 may have some inconsistencies (I don't recall any and I played it on God mode, couldn't beat the clone battle though) but very few in comparison to GOW4. I didn't have to block and dodge like every attack in GOW1 because enemies are going to slide across the floor and land hits. I didn't go into every fight unleashing all my powerful magic knowing that it would be replenished for the next fight. I knew what a gorgon or minotaur was capable of after my first fight with one.

In regards to the blocking and the dodging, again, that's just how this game works. It never sold itself on being like the older games. It made it clear from, certainly the second trailer, that this game's perspective would be different and that Kratos had a shield. That's not an inconsistency.

And you're kinda making it sound like every enemy has the ability to just slide right to you. They don't. Only certain enemies will do that, usually the dual wieling draugr and the regular sword guys. And honestly, once I knew they did that I knew how to anticipate it accordingly.

As for the magic vs. runic cooldowns. The magic in classic GoW was much stronger and could clear out an entire battle arena, whereas the runic attacks would maybe take out 3 or 4 enemies tops. Even then, many of the strongest runic attacks have long animations where enemies can still hit and sometimes kill you. It's not the same level of murder strength, so it makes sense you'd be able to use your runic attacks more in GoW '18 's combat than you could your magic in classic GoW.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Well, experience with sound in games has taught me to temper expectations. Pretty sure the reason most games have subtitles on by default is because the devs are so bad at mixing sound. There are SO MANY games in which it's difficult to understand characters, including in controlled cutscenes.

I’m wondering how “HD” sound can even get though too. Like this Tempest thing is supposedly able to simulate individual raindrops, but you can only distinguish so much. Like colors in a way, but probably even less.

I think the controller sounds like it could be the biggest change as far as haptic feedback and programmable button resistance.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

In the older games there were also enemies that could kill you faster and somehow had more damaging attacks than certain Bosses. This is nothing new and is present in most games that have Boss fights. In GoW1 the elite satyrs could be harder to fight than Ares himself.

If you know how to chain together combos while just hammering the square button at the same time there's no enemy that you can't take down within a minute. Seriously, Frost Rush into Whirling Storm, topped off by Executioner's Cleave, along with Arteus' arrows, destroys fools. Something the Matthewmatosis video forgot to mention when he talked about how Leviathan's Fury (sprint, then R2) was badly designed because it knocked enemies out of your reach, eventhough Whirling Storm perfectly crosses that gap.

Also, dogs have never one-shotted me in this game, unless maybe in Give Me God of War, so I still don't know how you accoplished that.

Well... that's just not how the game works, and it never claimed any different.

Obviously, but that's the all-gloves-are-off mode, where it specifically tells you that things are going to get really tough. But you didn't play that mode on your first run, I'm sure.

In complete agreement. I had little issues with the cooldowns, but a far better system would be to tie it to a particular sequence of events or combo chain that's harder to do. You can still have the cooldowns, but make it 1/5 the speed of recovery and have a certain combo chain increase the recovery rate.

In regards to the blocking and the dodging, again, that's just how this game works. It never sold itself on being like the older games. It made it clear from, certainly the second trailer, that this game's perspective would be different and that Kratos had a shield. That's not an inconsistency.

And you're kinda making it sound like every enemy has the ability to just slide right to you. They don't. Only certain enemies will do that, usually the dual wieling draugr and the regular sword guys. And honestly, once I knew they did that I knew how to anticipate it accordingly.

As for the magic vs. runic cooldowns. The magic in classic GoW was much stronger and could clear out an entire battle arena, whereas the runic attacks would maybe take out 3 or 4 enemies tops. Even then, many of the strongest runic attacks have long animations where enemies can still hit and sometimes kill you. It's not the same level of murder strength, so it makes sense you'd be able to use your runic attacks more in GoW '18 's combat than you could your magic in classic GoW.

Those elite satyrs were good fighters, I don't have any problem facing legit challenging enemies. It's not like they were some cannon fodder enemy that you fought in the opening hour that now beat your ass because the devs changed the numbers. I played on Hard for most of the game (dropping it when I went to areas that I was supposed to be) and when I got to that area with the dog room, my level was low enough to make it so they one-shotted me.

The fact that I didn't play the hardest difficulty doesn't the change the fact that next time I face an enemy, attacks that I was able to block might now be unblockable while certain attacks that I have that may have staggered them no longer work. It's why I stuck to runic attacks because I could depend on them to stagger enemies vs practicing other moves that can change from fight to fight. I didn't have to relearn how to fight the elite satyrs in GOW1 every fight for example.

Lots of enemies slide towards you to be able to land hits, you yourself slide towards enemies to land hits too. I just felt like I couldn't trust the game.

I didn't care for the feel of runic attacks as they were more about press this button to do this cool attack vs learning to do this cool thing. And, like I said the cooldown aspect made it feel MOBA-like. But, yeah, having it where at least playing well would charge them would feel a lot more organic and flow better. IIRC, the runic attacks were like the safest attacks as they would consistently stagger enemies and I want to say that you couldn't get hit in their animations beside for maybe at the very end similar to how I'm almost positive you couldn't get hit during the executioner's cleave but only at the very end.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Well, experience with sound in games has taught me to temper expectations. Pretty sure the reason most games have subtitles on by default is because the devs are so bad at mixing sound. There are SO MANY games in which it's difficult to understand characters, including in controlled cutscenes.

Or, they might actually be great at mixing sound, but the sound calibration on your TV sucks, so it ends up sounding wrong coming out of your TV. It kind of depends on the developer, and the consumer.

Then again, I always bump up dialogue volume because I have minor hearing damage, so I'm not exactly the best person to ask about how good something sounds.

 

[Ezekiel]

Or, they might actually be great at mixing sound, but the sound calibration on your TV sucks, so it ends up sounding wrong coming out of your TV. It kind of depends on the developer, and the consumer.

Then again, I always bump up dialogue volume because I have minor hearing damage, so I'm not exactly the best person to ask about how good something sounds.

My sound doesn't come out of my TV, it comes out of two to seven speakers, depending on the source. Have the receiver set to Direct, so I never upmix to more channels than it was intended. I've done nothing with the EQ. My bass is at medium.

Most devs do suck at sound.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

My sound doesn't come out of my TV, it comes out of two to seven speakers, depending on the source. Have the receiver set to Direct, so I never upmix to more channels than it was intended. I've done nothing with the EQ. My bass is at medium.

Most devs do suck at sound.

The PS3 Killzone games are some of the punchiest, most crisp sounding games even today. Most PS3 exclusives used 7.1 LPCM so it’s technically lossless audio. The lead hardware designer said how disappointed he was with PS4’s audio capabilities by contrast. I guess that’s one thing the Cell really excelled at, no pun.

On PC, I only have a 2.1 Klipsche desktop setup and 3D capable headphones, so not exactly the same thing. But I remember some of the Battlefield games being pretty good, and I think the Max Paynes were decent. Hell even Half Life 2 sounded good for its time, but nothing really stands out as being an audio king from more current releases. Although there’s a ton of stuff I haven’t played either.

On topic, it sounds like the original Red Dead: Redemption is the biggest influence on GoT.

That sounds way too big for me, even though the game’s premise is intriguing. I’m actually leaning more towards TLoU2 now as I’m growing weary of open world stuff. I still haven’t bothered to finish The Witcher 3 or Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I have about 60+ hours into each and it feels like I’m not even half way in either.

I’m fatigued by the trend to keep making games bigger. I much prefer tight design with excellent replay value.

 

[BrawlMan]

If you're interested in sword stances and extra info in Japanese culture. Check it.