Chrononaut

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

I've been playing .hack//G.U. since the remaster went on sale and I hadn't played it since like 2007 and it's increasingly hilarious to me now that I'm familiar with MMOs how The World would be a terrible MMO if it were real. There's no system in place to opt in for PvP, it's just always active, there's no actual endgame raiding or any multiplayer content like instanced dungeons, there's no real crafting system and player shops consist of just selling items purchased from NPC vendors without any actual set market economy, and this is before getting into the out of game stuff and clear lack of genuine player account security.

But the game is still charming.

@Fabricant451

store.steampowered.com/app/368340/Cro…

Highly recommend Crosscode if you haven't already played it. It mixes the idea of a "virtual reality MMO" but with a twist: the mmo is actually set on a alien planet with human colonial settlers, and you are playing as what is essentially a hologram. The gameplay was inspired by Alundra, which was inspired by Zelda, though it has more of a action bent. But! The puzzles in the dungeons are some of the most difficult I've ever encountered, so that might be a plus for some people.

Decided on a whim to start Doom 3 again after realizing I have never gotten through the whole thing. Loaded up the original with the ReDux mod and it looks gorgeous.

I can see where Doom fans and purists would have been turned away, but I think as an individual product this thing stands on its own very well.

@Gelatinous Cube

Everyone I knew loved it at the time, thanks to the Co-op. I don't know if its as fun for multiple side by side playthroughs as the other dooms though.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

Also, here's YET ANOTHER response from 3d realms. steamcommunity.com/app/562860/discuss…

Here's the text in case you don't want to click the link: Frederick Shchreiber: "We've become aware of some confusion about whether Ion Fury will be censored in response or relation to recent controversy.

The answer is no; we are only tweaking a rarely seen decorative sprite and removing some offensive text found outside the game world in leftover map data.

The upcoming patch otherwise includes typical bug fixes and balancing changes."

What Are You Listening To?

What Are You Listening To?

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

As I've said before, it sounds like the dev team needs to disavow the one guy and make a public statement. Unless they want their gamerbase to be solely comprised of people trying to "own" the libs/SJWs.

@Inkarnate

Don't want to take the wind out of your sails, but Terminx is one of the people responsible for the engine the game exists on. (Eduke32, a build engine source port). Project probably wouldn't exist without him. He's also a prominent member of the duke nukem 3d modding community. They hired him for his talent and were likely aware of how he acted prior to hiring him.

Thankfully the game is actually very progressive. The villain is a card carrying sexist who calls Shelly a "little girl". She calls him a "bald headed bitch".

The worst stuff in those conversations are the people acting like Duke Nukem as a character is worth salvaging.

@Fabricant451

Yeah, I think Shellys generally a better character. Her rage is awesome.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

<Snipped quote by Chrononaut>

Not here to debate or anything, but I find it intriguing that Ion Fury is mentioned right after I just learned it existed because of some rather heavily political comments their developer team were making about trans people, SJWs, etc. in their public discord for the game, especially with the "my autism made me do it" being played as a response to the outrage.

Also found out that Iron Maiden was going to sue them for $2M because of trademark infringement before they were able to settle without a court case. I'm just wondering how much more messy this is going to end up to be, to be honest.

@Kuro

I mentioned it because it just released three days ago out of early access. First time I've heard of it, though I don't personally care about what people are saying on a discord in their free time, especially if it doesn't pertain to the game they actually sold. That honestly sounds tamer than what I found on the roleplayersguild discord two years ago (a man believed that blacks should be peacefully relocated back to Africa. He was Pro-fascist.)

The Iron Maiden lawsuit argued that the title Ion Maiden was too similar to their own band name and that people were being confused by the IP. Definitely untrue, but the dev team *did* make that as a intentional pun, so there was some basis for the suit.

Edit: Ok I looked it up. Here's the whole thing, along with a sample statement. I will point out that it seems there are actually trans members on the discord, so it's not like it's a bubble of hate, exactly.

resetera.com/threads/ion-fury-devs-sh…



Edit 2: Ok maybe don't read the last one, incredibly sexist.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

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Maybe not but I'm glad it did. Because fuck 'em. Tarantino makes abhorrent people out to be jokes before having them die horrifically and that same energy works in a game. Maybe you're there for the story but I'm there to find fun ways to shoot, stab, blow up, and otherwise fuck up some dumb Nazi assholes. The first reboot was not a game that I enjoyed for its narrative. Sure it was there and fine, but much like DOOM 2016 it was just some fudge over an already indulgent sundae.

<Snipped quote>

But it reviewed just as well, if not better, than New Order.

Youngblood, though, has issues well beyond the writing though so that one reviewing worse is not shocking.

@Fabricant451

store.steampowered.com/app/612880/Wol…

I didn't mean reviews by critics.

I'd agree with "fuck story, kill nazis" but there are much better shooters out there. Ion Fury, Dusk, Amid Evil, Nightmare Reaper, Doom 2016, Shadow Warrior 2. I'm spoiled for choices these days and playing a slightly experimental, middle-ground shooter with a bad story isn't going to make my pulse race.

If they go full ham in the next game though, which it sounds like they might considering they all but hinted that Doom 2016 and Wolfenstein share the exact same multiverse, I'm IN.

Edit: I should point out I play all of these shooters at the highest difficulty possible, so your experience might have been much more relaxing in New Colossus than mine. It's hitscan hell and I had problems that I didn't have in the previous game, due to generally bad general enemy placement and level design.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

<Snipped quote by Chrononaut>
What's the downside to this tho? Wolfenstein is the game series that had you fighting Mecha Hitler, zombies and mummies, and a medieval German warlord who was once defeated by an actual wizard and has a parallel dimension whose energy powers a Nazi superweapon. It is not the series that is better off with a grim story about B.J. being sad man especially since New Order basically opens with a comatose B.J. immediately being able to murder a bunch of Nazis without issue and ends with you fighting a guy nicknamed Deathshead who is inside a mech.

It going the route of comedy and shitting on Nazis for being dumb shitheads is basically the natural progression of a series whose main theme is "It's super fun to kill the shit out of Nazis"

@Fabricant451

Yes, but the darker tone is what made everyone interested in the revamped series in the first place. It didn't have to go full comedy to shit on them, remember the two blonde nazis in New Order who you basically spend the whole game terrorizing because they're self-important shitheads? Wolfenstein had to change its identify so people were actually interested, which is part of the reason why the game is set in a alternate 1960s as opposed to world war 2. When they went to comedy (which the series wasn't particularly known for), it reviewed badly. Because that isn't what anyone wanted.

I'd also just say that the writing is just, in general bad. I don't know what kind of message they were going for, or what the point of the story was, and by the end I just felt like it ended before it had a chance to say anything/their budget ran out because clearly it had half the budget of the previous title.

Then, well, Wolfenstein Youngblood is a spinoff, but it's definitely a continuation of that style of bad writing.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

<Snipped quote by Chrononaut>

Well those would be the responsibility of Arkane, Tango Gameworks, and MachineGames but also those game were good? Evil Within 2 was better than the first at least. IF anything it's Zenimax's non-Bethesda studios that are putting in the quality work.

@Fabricant451

God no it wasn't. It was a bunch of constantly re-used assets (it literally re-used the same map, but with the level design slightly altered and enemy placement altered over three times, possibly more) and used a semi-open world design in an attempt to disguise the lack of content. The setpieces in the first Evil Within were actually incredible and the amount of level variety was staggering. Gameplay was definitely a step up in Evil Within 2, but I wouldn't replay it if you held me at gunpoint if I had to see that misty little town you start in yet again.

Same with Wolfenstein New Colossus, they reused maps instead of making new ones and the game was the shortest out of both titles. And, you spend most of the game at half health, meaning you can't even play the promised fantasy of being BJ Blaskowitz, Tank Man and Slaughter King at large. I don't care that the game was trying to tell a "story", it was bad design and combined with enemies surrounding maps somehow in a more deadly manner than the previous game, it was a odd choice. Also, the plot went from a grim story of nazi occupation with a depressed protagonist realizing that he's but one man, to almost a hopeful comedy with a bungling fat nazi woman, your wife fighting nazis while pregnant with her shirt off, and a literal toilet humor scene that was thrown into the mix because God is dead and Machinegames wanted you to know this.

Dishonored 2 was OK, I just didn't like it because the antagonists didn't have as interesting motivations and Emilys powers seemed dramatically less effective/fun as Corvin. The stage with the doppleganger you can swap was fun/the clockwork level was neat. That and they kind of re-used the whole "oh this towns undergoing some kind of ecological apocalypse and if you do bad things bad will happen" crap that was later removed in Death of the Outsider and thank God for that. (I liked Death of the Outsider).

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

Doom Eternal. YES.


If Bethesda manages to bungle another sequel (Dishonored 2, Evil Within 2, Wolfenstein: New Colossus), I will RIOT.