You're not paying attention. We weren't talking about lock-on, we were talking about locking on with (shit button) R3, which they all started doing after the popularity of Dark Souls.
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With that said, I know Call of Duty 2 and World at War still have the better campaigns overall.
The last suggestion wouldn’t be that difficult to implement, but the rest would be detrimental to something else. If the camera won’t be locked when targeting, having an attack (or block or parry like Souls) means your thumb will be back and forth between right stick and the face buttons instead of just staying in one place. Pressing L3 isn’t any better than pressing R3, and holding/letting go of L1 or R1 brings us back to losing a gameplay function there and going back and forth between the stick and face buttons. Switching targets accurately in the midst of all of that wouldn’t be any easier than just flicking the right stick in any direction with targeting active.
The system you want works better in games where both the environment and enemies within it aren’t actively tag teaming the player.
Chances are that if you have to switch targets, it's to the next closest one or to the one nearest to you, the more pressing danger. L3 like in Devil May Cry 3 or double-tapping the lock-on button like Zelda is sufficient for that. Just make the targeting icon visible enough so that it's easy to very quickly choose from all the targets. If there are too many enemies for that, then it's probably not a game meant for lock-on anyway. Dark Souls has you switching from lock-on to free movement/camera much more often than it has you choosing from more than two forward targets, meaning that the older Z-targeting system would have you pressing L3 less than you press R3 with the current system.
If the playtester must constantly switch between the camera stick and face button, then the designers should consider improving their camerawork. Even if the environments are like in the Souls games and "fixed" cameras and wider fields of view are not possible, it's still possible to anchor the camera to the enemy but then allow the player to pull it away as the hero continues to face the enemy, like in The Wind Waker. At least then the player won't have to come to a stop in their dance with the enemy and disengage the lock in order to check the drop or spikes or whatever is behind the hero. They can continue to move backwards and sideways and look back as the enemy tries to corner them, without turning their back and giving the enemy an opening. They can also navigate backwards if they must get out of the place while fending off the pursuers.
It's lame that mechanics are so set in stone that developers keep making the same few types of games with the same ideas.
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SOE is pretty much an Uncharted vechicle level in the middle half COD WW2. I like it
Edit: the stealth mission has been finished too. Liberation Completed. This is nothing new to the franchise, but it was seldom done often. The stealth is basic, but works enough. It was nice playing the French lady and kicking ass as her for the first half.
Edit: the stealth mission has been finished too. Liberation Completed. This is nothing new to the franchise, but it was seldom done often. The stealth is basic, but works enough. It was nice playing the French lady and kicking ass as her for the first half.
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Started Inscryption and this is something else. I'm uniquely drawn to games where learning the rules *is* the game.
The setting is you're trapped in some creepy cabin and forced to play a roguelite deck-builder against a sinister DM. You're playing animal cards and inflicting damage against each other, represented by a scales slowly being weighed down by teeth (you're free to pull your own if you have some pliers and want to tip the scales in your favor). Playing cards usually requires sacrificing a number of animals, or consuming a number of bones (from sacrifices). There's a whole bunch of weird synergies at play. In between rounds you're free to walk around the cabin and play a meta game of escape-the-room which advances the mystery of wtf is going on while modifying your deck (and the cards start talking back).
Apparently the game takes a few drastic swings as you progress but so far this first part is proprofoundly atmospheric and stimulating to me.
The setting is you're trapped in some creepy cabin and forced to play a roguelite deck-builder against a sinister DM. You're playing animal cards and inflicting damage against each other, represented by a scales slowly being weighed down by teeth (you're free to pull your own if you have some pliers and want to tip the scales in your favor). Playing cards usually requires sacrificing a number of animals, or consuming a number of bones (from sacrifices). There's a whole bunch of weird synergies at play. In between rounds you're free to walk around the cabin and play a meta game of escape-the-room which advances the mystery of wtf is going on while modifying your deck (and the cards start talking back).
Apparently the game takes a few drastic swings as you progress but so far this first part is proprofoundly atmospheric and stimulating to me.
Inscryption was made by the same developer as Pony Island, another game where 'the game' is only a tiny part of the actual game. There's less of that feeling you describe of 'learning the rules', but I'd still recommend playing it if you haven't.
Haven't written in months here. Man i was pretty burned out with media and games. Was stuck in older- comfort games and such.
Now i got myself two games: First is
"Jagged Alliance 3" - Had my eye on it when it came out, now it was a bit cheaper in a sale. Worth the money. I loved playing the first two, but of course that was 25 years ago and Sirtech hasn't existed for as long. There was another Jagged Alliance between this, but it was "different" (I only remember playing like the tutorial and been done with it - don't even remember what was "wrong")
This "third" one is pretty much very much in the same as the old ones. Strategy layer (this time in a fictional african micronation instead a south-american one), with loads of tactical battles with small units vs small units in a tick- and turn based battles. Sometimes silly, sometimes "overly action-hero-y" characters, thin, easy plot.
While i am wary of games "announcing" what they are at start, i have to admit that they really did what they wrote. Pretty much: "Jo. Hey the old JA games were slightly silly 80ies action-movie cliche's as a tactical videogame - We will be doing the same, sorry". And they are right.
Also: I like it. plays well, is sometimes REALLY hard and overall just feels good. The autoresolve seems to be really nice and gets realistic results. The characters (Most of which are from the old games) are fun and have surprisingly many lines (Don't have much impact on the story itself, but sometimes someone throws in an insight, a quip or an opinion, some pairs have short conversations) - Also you may have to choose because some won't work with each other.
We have an old streetgang of cursing, mental old woman helping defending a grungy port from a warlords army together with your band of international mercenaries. We have betrayals (which you can see from miles away), warcrimes, war profiteering, pirate/smugglers, weird shamans, old nazi medical experiment facilities. Loads of references (Courage the cowardly... hyaena - The goddamn doof-wagon from Mad Max somehow), tracking down a poacher bored with poaching with other poachers and spicing it up by hunting his ex-colleagues (and recruiting him), tracking down random mercenaries who got their ass- whooped or went A.W.O.L before we arrived and so on.
You know, the game is not perfect but there is an astonishing amount of detail and care in it i didn't expect. Someone did care or at least took it seriously. I recommend it - maybe i should have bought it full-price when it came out. Support the developer "Haemimont Games". Didn't really know about them, but i liked "Surviving Mars" of them. And i heard of "Victor Vran" and i am pretty sure i have one of the newer Tropicos in my library.
Also i got myself "Wrath of Righteous" the Pathfinder 1 videogame. The one after Kingmaker. Also based on a official campaign setting. Introducing (powercreeping) the "Mystical Paths" for extra abilities and bonusses for epic campaigns (Similar but better integrated (and earlier) to the old "Epic" rules in Dnd 3.5)
Haven't played it much. So far: I am more meh on this. Not great, not bad though. Has a LOT of Pathfinder rules in it. So many base-classes WITH archetypes. Spells, abilities, feats. If you don't know what you are doing you might get overwhelmed, but me as a roleplayer who knows it pretty well: YAY powergaming, hehe. Will play more of it, see how the story developes. It seems later on i get to steer a anti-demon crusade with some strategic components. Maybe that will be fun (Kingmaker had it's realm-building layer which was... ok i guess - WAY more fun in a pen&paper campaign)
Now i got myself two games: First is
"Jagged Alliance 3" - Had my eye on it when it came out, now it was a bit cheaper in a sale. Worth the money. I loved playing the first two, but of course that was 25 years ago and Sirtech hasn't existed for as long. There was another Jagged Alliance between this, but it was "different" (I only remember playing like the tutorial and been done with it - don't even remember what was "wrong")
This "third" one is pretty much very much in the same as the old ones. Strategy layer (this time in a fictional african micronation instead a south-american one), with loads of tactical battles with small units vs small units in a tick- and turn based battles. Sometimes silly, sometimes "overly action-hero-y" characters, thin, easy plot.
While i am wary of games "announcing" what they are at start, i have to admit that they really did what they wrote. Pretty much: "Jo. Hey the old JA games were slightly silly 80ies action-movie cliche's as a tactical videogame - We will be doing the same, sorry". And they are right.
Also: I like it. plays well, is sometimes REALLY hard and overall just feels good. The autoresolve seems to be really nice and gets realistic results. The characters (Most of which are from the old games) are fun and have surprisingly many lines (Don't have much impact on the story itself, but sometimes someone throws in an insight, a quip or an opinion, some pairs have short conversations) - Also you may have to choose because some won't work with each other.
We have an old streetgang of cursing, mental old woman helping defending a grungy port from a warlords army together with your band of international mercenaries. We have betrayals (which you can see from miles away), warcrimes, war profiteering, pirate/smugglers, weird shamans, old nazi medical experiment facilities. Loads of references (Courage the cowardly... hyaena - The goddamn doof-wagon from Mad Max somehow), tracking down a poacher bored with poaching with other poachers and spicing it up by hunting his ex-colleagues (and recruiting him), tracking down random mercenaries who got their ass- whooped or went A.W.O.L before we arrived and so on.
You know, the game is not perfect but there is an astonishing amount of detail and care in it i didn't expect. Someone did care or at least took it seriously. I recommend it - maybe i should have bought it full-price when it came out. Support the developer "Haemimont Games". Didn't really know about them, but i liked "Surviving Mars" of them. And i heard of "Victor Vran" and i am pretty sure i have one of the newer Tropicos in my library.
Also i got myself "Wrath of Righteous" the Pathfinder 1 videogame. The one after Kingmaker. Also based on a official campaign setting. Introducing (powercreeping) the "Mystical Paths" for extra abilities and bonusses for epic campaigns (Similar but better integrated (and earlier) to the old "Epic" rules in Dnd 3.5)
Haven't played it much. So far: I am more meh on this. Not great, not bad though. Has a LOT of Pathfinder rules in it. So many base-classes WITH archetypes. Spells, abilities, feats. If you don't know what you are doing you might get overwhelmed, but me as a roleplayer who knows it pretty well: YAY powergaming, hehe. Will play more of it, see how the story developes. It seems later on i get to steer a anti-demon crusade with some strategic components. Maybe that will be fun (Kingmaker had it's realm-building layer which was... ok i guess - WAY more fun in a pen&paper campaign)
Inscryption is a fascinating game but unfortunately its roguelike element was too much of an obstacle for me. I just don't have the patience to play the same damn card game over and over.
Steam Summer Sale!
Picked up the following three games on the sale:
Furi- some sort of fighting and bullet hell mishmash thing with very bright colors.
Frost Punk- stepping outside of my comfort zone to try a city builder. I respect and admire these games but never had the desire to squint at little icons and read stuff when playing a game.This one is pretty beloved and looks interesting and after breaking my thumbs with Pipistrello I'm ready for something more contemplative.
Assassin's Creed Shadows- I'm down for a dumb map clearing action game to have on my big screen.
Steam Summer Sale!
Picked up the following three games on the sale:
Furi- some sort of fighting and bullet hell mishmash thing with very bright colors.
Frost Punk- stepping outside of my comfort zone to try a city builder. I respect and admire these games but never had the desire to squint at little icons and read stuff when playing a game.This one is pretty beloved and looks interesting and after breaking my thumbs with Pipistrello I'm ready for something more contemplative.
Assassin's Creed Shadows- I'm down for a dumb map clearing action game to have on my big screen.
Furi
Played me Steam-refundable amount with this game. It is interesting but not for me.
If you're into intense combat that does interesting variations on things you've played before, definitely check it out, especially since it's literally 2 bucks right now. The combat combines the kind of action combat that has dominated the space: Sekiro, WuLong/Wolong Black Kong Fallen Feather Ninja Gaiden etc etc, but also twin stick shooting.
Yes of course there is a parry but it's just one of the things (albeit the most annoying thing). The game mostly uses its super contrasty neon-y color palatte to good effect but there are also just one too many instances where the physical obstacles of the battlefieid clash with the action in a way that is more annoying than challenging.
Generally the combat is a lot of fun.
My problem is that the challenge/difficulty for me lies primarily in the length of the fight. They fights are multiple rounds- it's a boss-rush feeling (I only faced two enemies and quit at the second), and the enemy changes tactics with each round. But in each round you have to kill it twice like a Sekiro boss. Meanwhile the player also gets three lives, and health replenishes with each round (but not the lives). This meant that by the time I got to the 4th phase of the second enemy and it introduced a powerful grab attack that I didn't understand how to defend against, I had to replay the first three rounds just to get killed by that attack again. And this is where I quit a game. I'm all for trying again to learn specific attacks but I do not have patience for a game that won't let me actually do that without a LOT of time wasting.
Played me Steam-refundable amount with this game. It is interesting but not for me.
If you're into intense combat that does interesting variations on things you've played before, definitely check it out, especially since it's literally 2 bucks right now. The combat combines the kind of action combat that has dominated the space: Sekiro, WuLong/Wolong Black Kong Fallen Feather Ninja Gaiden etc etc, but also twin stick shooting.
Yes of course there is a parry but it's just one of the things (albeit the most annoying thing). The game mostly uses its super contrasty neon-y color palatte to good effect but there are also just one too many instances where the physical obstacles of the battlefieid clash with the action in a way that is more annoying than challenging.
Generally the combat is a lot of fun.
My problem is that the challenge/difficulty for me lies primarily in the length of the fight. They fights are multiple rounds- it's a boss-rush feeling (I only faced two enemies and quit at the second), and the enemy changes tactics with each round. But in each round you have to kill it twice like a Sekiro boss. Meanwhile the player also gets three lives, and health replenishes with each round (but not the lives). This meant that by the time I got to the 4th phase of the second enemy and it introduced a powerful grab attack that I didn't understand how to defend against, I had to replay the first three rounds just to get killed by that attack again. And this is where I quit a game. I'm all for trying again to learn specific attacks but I do not have patience for a game that won't let me actually do that without a LOT of time wasting.
I forgot to mention this to you but, it is a difficult game and I didn't get a chance to tell you. I stopped caring for the game after the third boss and moved on back when I bought it in 2016. The year it came out. It was also one of the start of the indie games to have a a parry function as its core combat mechanic. It and Way of the Passive Fist a few years before.
Yeah I'm glad I tried it and I think it's good. And heck it's not even that the moment to moment gameplay is too hard for me. It's that the fight is so long I literally just got bored.
In a similar vein with a very different game, as much as I liked Pipistrello I didn't finish it. I got to the last major area of the game and just got sick of all the wall jumping.
I'm all about not finishing games these days. The same instinct that changed my viewing habits from following TV shows through to the end to quitting when I'm ahead has hit games. Sometimes... sometimes we done, you know?
In a similar vein with a very different game, as much as I liked Pipistrello I didn't finish it. I got to the last major area of the game and just got sick of all the wall jumping.
I'm all about not finishing games these days. The same instinct that changed my viewing habits from following TV shows through to the end to quitting when I'm ahead has hit games. Sometimes... sometimes we done, you know?
I love Frostpunk to bits. It is one of the few city builder games where I actually care to play the scenarios, instead of just playing the sandbox mode, and I have revisited it more than a few times.
The only thing I wish was that there was a bigger tech tree, with more building options. Apparently they are remaking the game, so we'll see how that turns out.
I didn't care too much for the sequel though. I loved the granularity of the first game - placing each house and building. The second is much bigger scale, where you place whole districts, and they fill themselves out. I should give it another shot at some point though.
Still playing Morrowind. I thought I just needed a quick scratch of nostalgia, but nope, I'm in full steam now. I missed it. I recognize it now as a very contemplatively-paced game. After literal years of the constant challenge of Elden Ring and Dark Souls, it's refreshing to settle into a game this intimate, a game in which nothing is immediate, and any challenge can be deferred int lieu of anything else. It's a game rife with stuff to do; the main quest is little more than a suggestion; I've spent hours rising in rank with the Morag Tong, cementing my place in House Hlaalu, robbed some tombs to cobble together my mismatched set of heavy armor, etc. This game is so much more than its progeny, their beauty aside, could ever hope to be. I can see how it might not grab the attention of the modern-day gamer with its dated look and antiquated mechanics, but I honestly feel anyone who can look past those things and give it time and a chance, they'll find a gem the likes of which we haven't seen very often since 2002.
Honestly, I think that if Bethesda gave Morrowind the Oblivion UE5 glow-up and redid the combat system, it'd find an audience in the modern Souls-like fandom. The game made few efforts to hold the player's hand and was eager to punish carelessness, and it also left things wide open for experimentation in gear.
- Apr 1, 2009
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- Whatever, just wash your hands.
After playing the first two missions, AW is clearly taking influences from Crysis 2 and 3 with the suit upgrades, and Sledge Hammer were clearly inspired by Elysium (2013) with the Exo Suits. Titanfall as wel,l but that is the most obvious anyway. AW also feels the most arcade like of all the campaigns. With kills or style of kills netting you upgrade points, or if you bother to find intel. Stems for a quicker heal, a bullet time meter, multiple grenade types you can switch on the fly, and jet boosting to doge. Sledge were onto something, and it's kinda sad they were limited by Activision, and couldn't develop it further with an actual sequel.
A lot of AW's DNA can be felt in IW, but the latter I find better. IW is also kinda arcadey as well, depending on the difficulty. Which is even more ironic, since Sledge Hammer had nothing to do with Infinite Warfare's campaign. On that note, both games feel like a first person version of Vanquish, but much more limited than the 3rd person cover shooter. IW has the most gameplay movement to make up for it though. Either games are better Vanquish style games than whatever the fuck Quantum Break was supposed to be.
BTW, in which order do you put these in best to least best: Infinite, Advance, Black Ops 2, and WW2. I know BLOPS2 is considered the best of the sub-series, but I never cared for it as a whole, aside from some of the bonus games like Dead-Ops. I know Infinite is in my #1 spot of the 4.
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- Apr 1, 2009
- 16,495
- 5,094
- 118
- Gender
- Whatever, just wash your hands.
Hmm, which would I consider best. Well the best playing is WW2, no other cod I played felt as buttery smooth to play as that. But, all cod games play pretty well, as a whole I would say the worst playing, outside of the first game is COD Ghosts, that one just feels off to play. But for enjoyment, both story, set pieces, etc. I think I would go Infinite Warfare, Advanced Warfare, Blops2 then WW2. One thing I really liked about Blops 2 was you could effect story events in some kinda clever ways that you don't expect from COD games, plus the aformentioned machete scene, also I think its robot (drone) destruction is a bit more satisfying then in IW and AW, they just did some really nice touches with sparks and flame and such that I really appreciate.