*

Offline Fortuna

  • *
  • Posts: 2979
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #740 on: January 21, 2017, 03:41:50 AM »
The jump scare shows how poor an artistic director is at making horror. Silence of the Lambs, the restaurant scene in The Godfather, the "funny" scene in Goodfellas etc... are example of masterful directing, and how to truly make your audience shit their pants. Alien is also another example. While Alien does use some jump scares, they're necessary for the scenes where Scott makes you think there is going to be one and there never is.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2017, 03:43:59 AM by Hollocron »

Elusive Rabbit

Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #741 on: January 21, 2017, 04:04:29 PM »
The jump scare shows how poor an artistic director is at making horror. Silence of the Lambs, the restaurant scene in The Godfather, the "funny" scene in Goodfellas etc... are example of masterful directing, and how to truly make your audience shit their pants. Alien is also another example. While Alien does use some jump scares, they're necessary for the scenes where Scott makes you think there is going to be one and there never is.

Don't forget the opening sequence of When a Stranger Calls.

*

Offline rooster

  • *
  • Posts: 4139
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #742 on: January 21, 2017, 05:12:26 PM »
The jump scare shows how poor an artistic director is at making horror. Silence of the Lambs, the restaurant scene in The Godfather, the "funny" scene in Goodfellas etc... are example of masterful directing, and how to truly make your audience shit their pants. Alien is also another example. While Alien does use some jump scares, they're necessary for the scenes where Scott makes you think there is going to be one and there never is.
Jump scares in movies have no effect on me, but for video games it's completely different. You don't have to react with a movie, you have to react in video games.

Yes, the sound and environment should also factor in - which Amnesia does do a good job with. But unless I'm forced to make a reaction with a jump scare, then it's not a deal breaker for me. But when I know something is waiting to chase me down, it stresses me out and I don't want it.

Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #743 on: January 22, 2017, 06:45:46 PM »
Stardew Valley

I'm hopelessly addicted. It's like a better Harvest Moon.

Just started playing this yesterday. I did not expect to get sucked in so quickly, it's surprisingly good. I'm about halfway through my first summer at the moment.

*

Offline juner

  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 10174
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #744 on: January 22, 2017, 08:31:38 PM »
Playing The Vanishing of Ethan Carter on PS4.

Built on the Unreal Engine, the graphics are beautiful. The game play is simple in terms of how to interact, and the story so far is legit creepy. It bills itself as a narrative that doesn't hold your hand, and it stays true to that. No real intro, no tutorial or context, just go and figure it out.  Very fun so far, especially for only $20.

*

Offline honk

  • *
  • Posts: 3347
  • resident goose
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #745 on: January 22, 2017, 10:56:44 PM »
Playing The Vanishing of Ethan Carter on PS4.

Built on the Unreal Engine, the graphics are beautiful. The game play is simple in terms of how to interact, and the story so far is legit creepy. It bills itself as a narrative that doesn't hold your hand, and it stays true to that. No real intro, no tutorial or context, just go and figure it out.  Very fun so far, especially for only $20.

lol walking simulator

play a real game scrub
ur retartet but u donut even no it and i walnut tell u y

*

Offline juner

  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 10174
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #746 on: January 23, 2017, 02:31:08 AM »
Playing The Vanishing of Ethan Carter on PS4.

Built on the Unreal Engine, the graphics are beautiful. The game play is simple in terms of how to interact, and the story so far is legit creepy. It bills itself as a narrative that doesn't hold your hand, and it stays true to that. No real intro, no tutorial or context, just go and figure it out.  Very fun so far, especially for only $20.

lol walking simulator

play a real game scrub

says the guy who plays games that are literally endless pizza delivery missions

I also picked up I am Setsuna. A more classic, sprite JRPG. A bit of a change of pace after the massive epic game that was FFXV.

I still need to play Doom, which I picked up on sale over the holidays. I tried to get into Call of Duty:IW; beat the campaign but didn't enjoy multiplayer. Might even jump back into Overwatch.

*

Offline Ghost Spaghetti

  • *
  • Posts: 908
  • Don't look in that mirror. It's absolutely furious
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #747 on: January 24, 2017, 04:47:24 PM »
Railroad Tycoon 2

I found it cheap on Steam and am now enjoying playing a 20-year old game that has stood up relatively well.

*

Offline Lord Dave

  • *
  • Posts: 7653
  • Grumpy old man.
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #748 on: January 26, 2017, 10:03:00 PM »
Doom (2016) - Demo

Downloaded, played, had fun.

It lives up to the hype, giving you the original doom feel of exploration and just killing demons.  Mechanically it works well with "glory kills" giving you health and ammo at the expense of slowing you down, giving you secrets to find, weapon mods to kill more and faster...

And yeah, it's fun.  Also, it has permadeath mode.  So fun!
If you are going to DebOOonK an expert then you have to at least provide a source with credentials of equal or greater relevance. Even then, it merely shows that some experts disagree with each other.

Elusive Rabbit

Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #749 on: January 27, 2017, 11:51:35 AM »
POSTAL 2.

I've been playing this one on and off for a while now. I'm going back to beat it again, but this time on some crazy difficulty mode like Impossible.

*

Offline rooster

  • *
  • Posts: 4139
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #750 on: February 03, 2017, 11:23:29 PM »


By the way, this Rooster Plays thing is going to be (hopefully) a pretty consistent project. I have three videos now so if anyone is interested you should subscribe to The SoBros Network.

*

Offline honk

  • *
  • Posts: 3347
  • resident goose
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #751 on: February 28, 2017, 05:11:23 AM »
On the notion of The Age of Decadence, a game I've been shilling for in IRC for some time now. It's a hardcore RPG with isometric gameplay, turn-based combat, choices and consequences, plenty of dialogue trees to navigate, and tons of skill/stat checks. It has a lot in common with the old-school Fallout titles and other RPGs from the nineties, particularly the fact that it's very, very difficult. The setting is really cool. It's a gritty, cynical, post-apocalyptic world that's superficially akin to the Roman Empire - and it's low fantasy, as opposed to Generic Fantasy,TM which typically equates to high fantasy. So there aren't any gnomes or elves or dwarves or whatever, you can't play as a wizard, and so on. In fact, if you keep exploring the setting, you'll find it turning into something like soft sci-fi, and eventually cosmic horror.

It's also extremely well-balanced in terms of gameplay styles, letting you specialize in combat, stealth, or diplomacy/negotiation (those are just my rough estimations; there are other skills in the game). For example, there's one quest where you're tasked with infiltrating an outpost run by a rival faction to see what they're up to. You can show up and slaughter everyone, but that's very difficult. You can also convince the merchant who provides the outpost's supplies to poison their food and drink, making your fight easier, but you need to convince an alchemist to sell you a strong poison first. There's a local gang of bandits (whom you meet in a concurrent quest where you have to rescue someone they've kidnapped; taking this option kills two birds with one stone) you can persuade to attack the outpost for you. Or you can slip into the outpost via stealth or impersonating a scholar they've sent for; once you've done that, you can overload the machines to destroy the facility, or you can betray your employer by getting the machines up and running, essentially declaring your new allegiance to that faction. Admittedly, that's one of the more complex quests in the game, but I think it demonstrates the viability of different playstyles fairly well.

One more point I want to discuss is the beginning of the game, just because it's really creative, and the kind of thing I'd like to see more RPGs do. The event that kicks off the plot is a merchant arriving in town with a mysterious map, and your involvement is different depending on which class you chose when you created your character. If you're an assassin, you're sent to kill the merchant. If you're a mercenary, you're assigned to guard the merchant. If you're a loremaster, the merchant hires you to examine the map. If you're a thief, you're sent to rob the merchant. You get the idea. Every class has its own unique intro quest, and all of them end up with you gaining possession of the map by perfectly logical means, with no mention whatsoever of fate, destiny, or "Chosen One" bullshit. (Incidentally, this is the only time you can expect a lenient response to failing the stat/skill checks, as there wouldn't be much of a game if you never got the map.) I mean, there are a few characters you meet later on who talk about fate and destiny, and it is possible to convince a local religion that you're the "Chosen One," but you shouldn't take any of that at face value. This is a very cynical game.

In the interests of tl;dr, I should wrap this up. This is obviously not a game for everyone. However, if you're at all interested in anything that I've said here, then I strongly encourage you to try it out. It's awesome.
« Last Edit: March 18, 2017, 08:50:23 PM by honk »
ur retartet but u donut even no it and i walnut tell u y

Rama Set

Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #752 on: March 05, 2017, 09:25:26 PM »
One of the best RPGs, Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition, is currently free for a limited time on GOG.
Go get it. https://www.gog.com/game/neverwinter_nights_diamond_edition


Edit: The deal has expired.

Do you still play? I'm on a still running server. Awesome game.

*

Offline Particle Person

  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 2987
  • born 2 b b&
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #753 on: March 06, 2017, 02:34:14 PM »
implying video games are good
Your mom is when your mom and you arent your mom.

*

Offline Snupes

  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 1957
  • Counting wolves in your paranoiac intervals
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #754 on: March 15, 2017, 09:04:59 AM »
This may blow your mind, but I've been playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild since March 3rd. Just beat it. This also may shock you, but I am crying and sniffly and my brain is full of love and sadness. This is also why I've been gone from IRC because I've just been dedicating every moment to playing it.

I don't know how to review this game, since I'm overtly blinded by fangirlism to an extreme degree. This might be the closest thing to a 'perfect' game I've played. Can't think of any flaws other than it's kind of annoying when your shield is near breaking and the game tells you it a little more often than would be desired. This feels like the perfection of the "open-world" game. The environment and world isn't an obstacle or just something to travel past, it's an integral part of the game.

I almost had to rethink and relearn how to play a video game, because most of the things you'd take for granted in other games as "this won't happen because game design" don't apply anymore. If something should happen when you do something, it more than likely will. If you're in a thunderstorm, you better not have any metal weapons or apparel on you. If someone's pelting you with lightning arrows, stay out of puddles. Fire creates an updraft, use it to your advantage. Physics does not wait for you nor will it be kind to you. Similarly, it won't be kind to enemies, so use it to your advantage. Don't use bomb arrows in a volcano (they'll burst into flame and explode). If you throw something at an enemy, you've just given them a weapon. Don't go into an arctic region lightly-dressed.

Not to mention all the ways you can solve puzzles are limited mostly by your imagination. Literally four other coworkers and I were discussing a particularly annoying one...only to find out every single one of us completed it in entirely different manners. We started asking each other about other puzzles (while being careful of spoilers) and, again, a large number of them we pulled off in completely different ways. There was one puzzle I was stuck on where I had to use metal objects in the room (metal crates, metal spheres) to conduct electricity to complete several circuits. I was having trouble with it and threw one of my halberds at a crate out of anger and—to my shock (haha)—the metal parts of the halberd conducted electricity. I proceeded to use the several metal weapons I had to cheese the puzzle and complete it. This isn't at all what you were supposed to do (my friend gave me the correct solution the next day), but it worked. Again, I didn't even consider it because that's something that virtually any other game would've just ignored.

I've had countless "holy shit" moments like that in this game. Every single time I thought I was done being surprised, there were more surprises waiting. You get a few simple powers, but you can use them together in an absurd amount of ways. My favourite is the "freeze time" rune you can use on objects. You freeze an object in place, but it stores all the kinetic energy gathered while it's frozen and uses it all at once when it unfreezes. Sounds almost useless in a game like this, but I've solved more puzzles and general issues than I can count with it, and you can combine it with other powers (magnetism and bombs, mainly) to accomplish ridiculous things.

There are an absurd amount of things to do in this game—the world is packed, but none of it feels like a Ubisoft collectathon, mainly because every reward is tangible. With the closest to a "collectable" there is, you do these things and you're rewarded in-game, but the game never pushes you toward them or really encourages you beyond "hey, there are things out there," and each of them requires a little puzzle-solving so it's not just climbing somewhere and touching a thing. Beyond that, there are tons of quests, all given by characters with motivations and personality, so (if you're like me and get attached to video game characters) you actually feel like helping them. The environment design is fucking fantastic; not only is it utterly beautiful, but the terrain is purely creative for an open-world game. The use of verticality inside of villages and out is a breath of (the wild) fresh air, scaling mountains feels more like actually scaling mountains than any other game I've played, the world feels like an actual world rather than some random bumps and hills tossed into a blender and distributed about so you can walk over them... I honestly believe this is the peak of open-world games.

And hey speaking of characters, can't say I'm shocked at all since Zelda is great at characters, but it's fantastic to be able to play an open-world adventure RPG where the characters aren't a bunch of interchangeable information-and-quest-distributing kiosks. While you'll run into people that only have one or two things to say, they're unique. Villages and towns are full of people with distinct personalities and designs, so much that I could remember people just after a couple visits to their town.

Combat is fantastic as well, clearly influenced by games that center around it like—most notably—Dark Souls. That's probably the most apt comparison, really, because this game is hard. I honestly haven't seen this many game over screens in a Zelda game in the entirety of my life, and I don't think I've ever died 20 minutes into a Zelda game before. It's not unforgiving, though, which is the best part. If you're patient, perceptive, and prudent, combat can be a breeze. There's little more satisfying than nailing down an enemy's attack patterns, their little tells, and suddenly taking down a formerly-difficult beast without a single scratch because they weren't able to lay a finger on you. And that's not even mention the fucking plethora of ways to defeat any given enemy. I was completely out of weapons and ended up literally beating a giant hinox (cyclops) to death with a metal box because I had no other option. I've started wildfires to smoke out foes and lead them right to me while they were too busy putting the fire on themselves out to fight back. I've knocked lanterns into explosives to light up a room, hammered boulders off mountains to disperse a crowd, led enemies into the paths of larger ones to cause collateral damage, froze enemies and used them as literal weapons against others...I could go on and on and on and on, but my point is that I've had far too many unique encounters to even dream of keeping track.

On top of all that, the soundtrack is the best Zelda soundtrack we've had since Wind Waker. Little anecdote, I was wandering around one of the game's villages, wondering why I was feeling so nostalgic and emotional (well, moreso than the rest of the game), when a few notes struck and I realized the theme is a gorgeous, slowed and rearranged rendition of the Dragon Roost Island theme, not only one of my absolute favourite Zelda songs, but one of my favourite pieces of music, period (which goes for a few other Zelda songs as well). My eyes got all misty and I just stood a few minutes, gazing out of the city and really taking in the music--already my favourite piece in this game--and revisiting memories both old and new. This is the perfect fusion of pushing gaming forward while fondly and tastefully looking back on where it's been. There are a few throwback songs (and they're all great), but the majority are completely original while feeling like they completely belong in the Zelda series.

I don't think I've ever felt so satisfied with a game before. I don't feel like I want to convince anyone it's amazing, I don't feel like debating with anyone who thinks it isn't, I just feel happy that I played it and that I get to experience such a wonder. The best part is that, even though I've beaten the main story and been playing for at least 70+ hours, I'm not even close to being done with this. Once I complete every quest, collect everything I can, and upgrade everything, I still don't think I'll be finished, just because combat and general gameplay is so fun that I don't need a pointed objective to want to keep playing. This game is magical.
« Last Edit: March 15, 2017, 09:25:16 AM by Snupes »
There are cigarettes in joints. You don't smoke it by itself.

*

Offline Crudblud

  • *
  • Posts: 2175
  • A Moist Delectable Gentleman
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #755 on: March 15, 2017, 12:20:15 PM »
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild [...] is also why I've been gone from IRC because I've just been dedicating every moment to playing it.

Told you, Saddam.

Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #756 on: March 21, 2017, 06:20:45 PM »
Train Simulator. Is quite calming. I like trains.

Rama Set

Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #757 on: March 21, 2017, 06:51:46 PM »
I don't think I've ever felt so satisfied with a game before. I don't feel like I want to convince anyone it's amazing, I don't feel like debating with anyone who thinks it isn't, I just feel happy that I played it and that I get to experience such a wonder.

I does currently have a 97% rating on metacritic too.  I dont really play Zelda games, but this sounds phenomenal.

Offline Blanko

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 2471
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #758 on: March 21, 2017, 07:43:02 PM »
I don't think I've ever felt so satisfied with a game before. I don't feel like I want to convince anyone it's amazing, I don't feel like debating with anyone who thinks it isn't, I just feel happy that I played it and that I get to experience such a wonder.

I does currently have a 97% rating on metacritic too.  I dont really play Zelda games, but this sounds phenomenal.

I mean every Zelda game gets a 90+ so that in itself doesn't mean much

*

Offline Snupes

  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 1957
  • Counting wolves in your paranoiac intervals
    • View Profile
Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« Reply #759 on: March 24, 2017, 05:58:56 AM »
Playing The Last Guardian since, from what I've heard, it really shouldn't take me more than a day or two to beat. So far it's really, really good. I don't totally get the graphical complaints since it looks really nice so far, and Trico's AI and animation is fantastic. Only problem I've had so far is that the controls are absolutely awful and I don't think I've seen the game run over 20fps yet. That's not hyperbole.

The only other flaw, actually, is that I feel the compulsive need to stop and pet Trico every ten seconds because he's so adorable, so this game will probably take way longer to complete than it should
There are cigarettes in joints. You don't smoke it by itself.