@ Darwin: Yeah, I finished it on hardmode a couple of times.
Top 5 - Computer Games
(109 posts) (27 voices)-
Darwin
Member@Custy: The music in that game was amazing. Especially liked the operatic scores in 'Curtains Down' and how it changed once you killed someone:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07zAZ49HIGM&feature=related
I also liked the rendition of Ave Maria that they did for the game.
It's composed by a guy called Jesper Kyd. He also composed the music for the Assassin's Creed games.
It has to be listened to:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJz9OGYmPvsPosted 1 year ago # -
Ty
ModeratorSkyrim will be the first Elder Scrolls game I don't buy.
I've bought every single other ES game, and wound up stopping before I finished out of boredom. Why do I keep buying them? The graphics always look great for the time. I read the breathless descriptions of how much awesome new shit you can do. Someone always says, "And this time the story is great!"
That last line is NEVER true. No one at Bethesda knows how to write. The stories are always lame, and poorly executed. The NPC's are terrible. I always feel like I am the only person in a world of randomly moving cardboard cutouts. And, for me, hacking monsters up and crafting potions is not enough to sustain my interest for a couple dozen hours of gameplay. I just never is.
Compare this to, say, any of the Baldur's Gate PC games, or the first Dragon Age, or either Mass Effect game. I played those games obsessively, not for the fancy crafting systems, but for the fascinating interpersonal relationships.
Screw you, Bethesda. You've gotten your last dime from me.
Posted 1 year ago # -
blotonthelandscape
MemberHaters gonna hate...
I thought Morrowind's story and setting was great (admittedly Oblivions story was a letdown, and the setting of the imperials was a bit vanilla, but it made up for it by being on the cutting edge of the visual experience, and being fun to play).
Posted 1 year ago # -
Darwin
MemberFallout 3 was more about atmosphere than anything else. When I stopped playing it was due to the sheer bleakness of the game and the landscape. It actually got to me, the way a good post-apocalyptic novel does(The Postman anyone?).
The story was nothing special, though it had its moments, especially when you find the group of people living in that virtual reality town. Seriously creepy.Posted 1 year ago # -
Ty
ModeratorFallout 3 was nostalgic enough that I made it through a single playthrough, which I've never managed to do with an ES game.
But none of my subsequent playthroughs of F3 made it to the end. In my second playthrough, Bethesda's cardboard NPC syndrome started to bore me. And I played Dragon Age and Mass Effect all the way through three or four times each. I also plan to play Deus Ex one or two more times.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorActually, Zero Punctuation covered a lot of what I was going to say, good and bad. I do differ from Yahtzee somewhat on the endings; I was also disappointed by the lack of follow-through for getting a sense of where each decision leads, though I think it was more of an artistic choice combined with the restrictions of being a prequel with a locked continuity. I did like, though, that there was no "happy" ending or one ending that was obviously better than the others.
One of the things that struck me was that exploration was more directly incentivized (via XP) than in the original Deus Ex. It was an interesting choice; I think that it felt a little like training wheels compared to the first, but then the gaming public and their expectations have changed enough that it was impossible to avoid. Adding the typhoon was a brilliant move as a design choice, because it made the boss battles doable if you were a social engineer/hacker character rather than a killer cyborg. I was pleasantly shocked that they let you talk the penultimate boss to death (so to speak, I forget his name; the guy with the crutch and the megalomania); I half expected the social manipulation to be pretty useless once you got to the endgame, but there it was.
Posted 1 year ago # -
kholdom0790
Member@Ty: I have to say, I adore Oblivion. Crafting potions, completing quests and collecting treasure are totally enough to keep me absorbed for a quite a long time. But I absolutely see where you're coming from with the writing and the cardboard cutout thing. Thing is, there are heaps of mods that make these things a lot more bearable now, and maybe even good? Improvements for bodies, more relationship options, more quests (and storyline? I don't know). Your game would end up being huge though =\
My explanation is Bethesda just try too hard to be all things to everyone, and really overreach themselves in the process. If Skyrim, coming out now, was the first TES game since Morrowind (i.e. no Oblivion), I think everyone would be salivating over it a lot more. I don't know that much about games though.
Posted 1 year ago # -
kholdom0790
MemberAlso, holy shit THIS:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112577-Skyrim-Legalizes-Gay-Marriage
Posted 1 year ago # -
Ty
Moderator"My explanation is Bethesda just try too hard to be all things to everyone, and really overreach themselves in the process."
I agree totally. This is the same reason I dislike Fable so much.
I love games that pick what they want to be good at, and then do the shit out of those things. Games that try to do everything usually fail at everything, for me.
Posted 1 year ago # -
The Fable series were crap. They didn't even have that much content to offset the absence of story - I should not be able to finish that kind of game in under a day. Conversely, I love the Bethesda stuff. Oblivion does require you to engage a lot with the side content to get the most out of the story, but I like doing that anyway. Also, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are both amazing. Fact.
I think the issue with any sandbox game is that you have to work to keep the story going, and you can very easily go off on a tangent and forget about it. The GTA series is a good example of that; I have friends for whom a game of GTA3 meant causing as much carnage as possible until the police captured or killed you. For me, the point was to do the missions and advance the plot.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Darwin
MemberGTA IV did an admirable job of constructing a great story with characters you could actually relate to. The dialogues were great and the deaths of the characters were actually interesting.
I agree that the sandbox games can go off-the-rails. This is why I preferred The Godfather game to the rest of the GTA games. They decided what they wanted to be good at and stuck to it.@'Nope:
A Deus Ex DLC is coming out. Sounds good.
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/119/1196220p1.htmlEdit:
I recently started playing Alan Wake. If you haven't played it yet and like a great story and gameplay mixed in with some pants-shittingly terrifying stuff, you should get it.Posted 1 year ago # -
Elemenope
Moderator@Kholdom
I found that Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul was awesome for smoothing out the gameplay issues and really unlocking the game's potential.
@Darwin
I heard about that; looks awesome. Five more hours of content would be good, especially if it's meant to fill in a little of the mid-game (where, I have to say, the narrative did feel a little slapdash).
Incidentally, every time I try to open that link, it crashes Chrome. Anyone else having that problem?
Posted 1 year ago # -
Elemenope
ModeratorNope, did that overhaul for Oblivion you mention above fix the awful badguy autoleveling problem?
Yes it did, in a few rather ingenious ways. It changed the standard spawn chart to work more like Fallout 3 (which, unlike Oblivion that was keyed directly to your level plus or minus 1, is more like your level plus or minus 4), and changed the distribution of monsters so that they were rarer on the roads and thick as thieves in the wilderness. Made the monsters work in packs if it made sense for them to do so (wolves actually got scary). Also dramatically increased monster diversity by giving every monster type several templates to attach (kinda like 3rd ed D&D). Got clever with resistances, immunities, and AI tactics to make the monsters more of a unique challenge. Eliminated the downscaling from the optional unique encounters (so if you were tried to do them early they were extremely hard).
It also implemented a functioning economy that responds to the amount of cash in play and how much equipment of the type has been bought and sold globally ad how many of the type of item that particular merchant has in stock, tweaked a few spells to be more useful and nerfed a few broken ones, greatly expanded the item diversity, added a few quests and factions, and tons of other stuff I don't even remember.
EDIT: Here's the FAQ for the Overhaul[PDF warning]. Its scope is truly astounding. Skip down to page 25 for the discussion of the actual changes (yes, there are 24 pages of just describing the merged mods and installation options).
EDIT: Looking over the pdf, it seems that the NPC/Monster leveling changes were more complicated and extensive than I remembered. Short answer is, yes, it works.
EDIT: And mudcrabs no longer attack on sight, nor chase you *very slowly* for the next hour after being sighted. :)
Posted 1 year ago # -
kholdom0790
MemberHoly shit. I/my bf have been attempting to make FCOM (four major overhauls in one? everyone knows right) work on my game, with limited success thus far. Maybe I'll just get OOO as it seems to have most of what I actually want - the levelling thing! So annoying.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Darwin
MemberA Max Payne 3 is definitely coming out: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/119/1197665p1.html
I can't wait. Great story, epic cutscenes, a shitload of bullets in slow-motion and some seriously creepy stuff. Count me in.
Posted 1 year ago #
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