Currently Playing

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Maturin
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Maturin » Thu Sep 02, 2021 8:54 am

System Shock 2 was easily one of my top 5 PC games ever made up until around a decade ago (I don't really know how to judge old games any more, it gets harder and harder to compare).

The atmosphere, setting, storytelling plus the neat RPG elements were just a perfect combination. The very end of the game is clearly rushed, but it doesn't take anything away from the rest of it. Replayed it god knows how many times back in the day.

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Pew-Pew
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Pew-Pew » Thu Sep 02, 2021 9:04 am

Alan wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 6:52 am
It’s the greatest silent protagonist to voiced protagonist swing in all of gaming. It’s why Gordon will never speak because valve knows they can’t beat it.


Curious, did you mute the music? It’s a strange one because I think the soundtrack is great but absolutely shit in the context if the game.


Pew-Pew wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 6:46 am
The 'nah' was funny but a bit weird too. It really seems like they ran out of time/money.
Didnt they lose the original ending and have to piece one together from what they had? Something like that I think.
I didn''t mute the music, but I did turn it down slightly. Some of it is OK, but the hyper techno bit in the engineering section is pretty jarring when it kicks in. I prefer the ambient atmosphere of most of the later levels. In some places you really need to hear what's going on so having loud 90s techno in your ears makes that pretty difficult :lol:

As for the ending, supposedly it isn't what they intended but they just had to work with it on a limited time scale etc. Not sure.

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Alan
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Alan » Thu Sep 02, 2021 9:15 am

“Due to miscommunications or differing ideas, a different cinematic video was created from the one that I originally scripted,” says Levine. “It had this elaborate sequence where Shodan would attempt to kill you in a double-cross, as this ‘cyber stinger’ that was in view provided tension of your impending doom.” Upon getting his hands on the video for the ending sequence, Levine didn’t see anything that he wrote in the script. “We didn’t have much to work with. It was like when you look in the cupboard and you’re trying to make soup, and you have a bag of salt and couple of pinto beans.” Working with fixed assets can be extremely challenging especially with limited time and resources as well as fighting the technology back then. Levine remembers, “We had to write to the assets we had at that point, and all we could do was edit it. We completely ran out of time and that cut scene wasn’t the right ending for the game.”
A man who could tell more truth and eat fewer pies.

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Pew-Pew
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Pew-Pew » Thu Sep 02, 2021 9:20 am

I think next up I'm going to play the Thief series, starting with Thief Gold (obviously).

I've played most of Thief Gold before, but to my shame I've never actually properly played Thief 2, so I'm really looking forward to that. I actually originally played Thief Deadly Shadows when I was about 13, so the more expansive levels of the first two games are always quite a nice surprise when I start playing them.

I'm not looking forward to some of the levels that they added in Thief Gold; particularly the Thieves' Guild mission. It's just a maze where everything looks the same, and particularly annoying on expert difficulty when you need more loot. I think I spent over two hours in that place when I first played through it...

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Pew-Pew
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Pew-Pew » Thu Sep 02, 2021 9:21 am

Alan wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 9:15 am
“Due to miscommunications or differing ideas, a different cinematic video was created from the one that I originally scripted,” says Levine. “It had this elaborate sequence where Shodan would attempt to kill you in a double-cross, as this ‘cyber stinger’ that was in view provided tension of your impending doom.” Upon getting his hands on the video for the ending sequence, Levine didn’t see anything that he wrote in the script. “We didn’t have much to work with. It was like when you look in the cupboard and you’re trying to make soup, and you have a bag of salt and couple of pinto beans.” Working with fixed assets can be extremely challenging especially with limited time and resources as well as fighting the technology back then. Levine remembers, “We had to write to the assets we had at that point, and all we could do was edit it. We completely ran out of time and that cut scene wasn’t the right ending for the game.”
Yeah I saw this quote somewhere. Not sure it excuses it really :P

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Alan
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Alan » Thu Sep 02, 2021 9:34 am

Yeah there’s a theory he made that story up because of the backlash :lol:
A man who could tell more truth and eat fewer pies.

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Sly Boots
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Sly Boots » Thu Sep 02, 2021 10:35 am

Finished a replay of Tyranny as I was in the mood for a cRPG and I'd only played it the once when it first came out.

I think it's one that's been a little unfairly overlooked in favour of the Pillars games in particular, for me this is a game I enjoyed my time with a lot more. In the first place it's nice to be given the chance to play a real bastard and not feel the game passively tut-tutting you for it. You're effectively working for quasi-Sauron in subduing a recently invaded country and, sure, you can try to be nice to people and try to make their lives a bit better (as I did in my first playthrough), but you can also lean in to just acting in total self-interest or even making things thoroughly worse for everybody. You go in holding a position of authority and respect, and can wield that quite mercilessly if you choose as people generally bow to your authority whether they agree with you or not.

There's some really interesting ideas here, too, such as the choose-your-own adventure style intro that has repercussions throughout the rest of the game, branching choices that close off bits of content to you, meaning a replay is worthwhile, and the innovative spell creation system is among the best I've seen in the genre.

I also like the fact that, at around 30 hours for a playthrough, it's a fairly breezy experience and leaves you wanting more, rather than wearing out its welcome as I've increasingly found with much longer games (and again a length that encourages a replay).

It's probably not a classic of the genre, but I think it deserves more recognition than it gets.

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Wrathbone
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Wrathbone » Thu Sep 02, 2021 4:48 pm

I replayed Tyranny last year and largely agree with you. It’s a different take on the genre with some interesting angles, and it certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome. The ending is still an abrupt let down, though, and the combat feels even less engaging than Pillars. The DLC, Bastard’s Wound, isn’t the best either sadly. It seemed to promise all sorts of secrets and revelations about the mysterious Oldwalls but nothing much comes of it.

The world-building and lore is what gripped me most, as it’s exceptional and had me speculating all the way. Sadly I doubt we’ll ever see any more of it.

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Sly Boots
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Sly Boots » Thu Sep 02, 2021 8:15 pm

Wrathbone wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 4:48 pm
I replayed Tyranny last year and largely agree with you. It’s a different take on the genre with some interesting angles, and it certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome. The ending is still an abrupt let down, though, and the combat feels even less engaging than Pillars. The DLC, Bastard’s Wound, isn’t the best either sadly. It seemed to promise all sorts of secrets and revelations about the mysterious Oldwalls but nothing much comes of it.

The world-building and lore is what gripped me most, as it’s exceptional and had me speculating all the way. Sadly I doubt we’ll ever see any more of it.
Yeah, I didn't get the DLC as people reported it's horribly buggy, and the game as a whole seems to have been abandoned in terms of fixes, no doubt due to disappointing sales.

Agreed on the ending, felt at the time (and still do) that it set things up in a really interesting way, you vs your former master, but then that's it. They probably intended for there to be a sequel that followed that storyline to its conclusion, but as you say that's highly unlikely to now ever happen.

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Animalmother
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Animalmother » Tue Sep 07, 2021 9:28 am

Days Gone on the PS4. There's a great game in there trying to get past the bad production. Glacial load times, objects just popping into existence, terrible UI (worst I've seen in a while), hints randomly pausing the game just as your being attacked, your character reacts the same with 1% or 100% health, dialogue repeating several times and fucking clunky combat. It's trying to be like The Last of Us but just isn't up to that standard. But when it lets you it's a fun game. I'm finally getting used to the motorbike controls (sort of) and hamfisting my way through the UI. I think Sony didn't give the developer a 2nd game simply because Days Gone wasn't up to par.

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Achtung Englander
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Achtung Englander » Tue Sep 07, 2021 1:51 pm

...and also, according to the develop, is "our" fault for not buying the game full price.
Games playing : Bioshock (Remastered) / Total War Britannia / Dirt 4

Rossell
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Rossell » Tue Sep 07, 2021 3:59 pm

Haven't given it the full beans but it did look a darn sight better performance wise on ps5, if you're planning on going there.

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Raid
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Raid » Thu Sep 30, 2021 4:44 pm

Night in the Woods

I've been meaning to play this for years, and the fact that it's leaving Gamepass today gave me the impetus to finally start it earlier this week. Well I'm glad I did, because it's a game that made me fairly emotional. I don't tend to talk about my rubbish mental health on here much, but there were definite parallels in NitW. Although it goes in a direction I wasn't really expecting, it's clearly penned by someone with experience of this stuff, and Mae is such a well written character that I couldn't help but care about. There's a bit at the end where she presses forward with something that's likely to end badly, and I was almost cursing the game for making me move her forward. To say much more would be to spoil the experience, and I'm not sure it's a game I'd recommend exactly, as there's some amount of tedium to it that really fits the experience but won't work for everyone.

I'm really not sure how much of the game's content to read in to the suicide of Alec Holowka, the principle developer who took his own life after being accused of the abuse of someone he was living with some years earlier. The game covers similar sounding themes pretty directly, albeit not with the main character. The other developers immediately split with Holowka after apparently being presented with additional evidence, so one would think that there's some truth to the story, but it all happened so suddenly that we never got to hear the accused's side. The guy was extremely talented, he wrote the excellent soundtrack for NitW, and the melancholy I feel for the situation is strangely appropriate.

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Snowy
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Snowy » Fri Oct 01, 2021 1:16 pm

Animalmother wrote:
Tue Sep 07, 2021 9:28 am
Days Gone on the PS4. There's a great game in there trying to get past the bad production. Glacial load times, objects just popping into existence, terrible UI (worst I've seen in a while), hints randomly pausing the game just as your being attacked, your character reacts the same with 1% or 100% health, dialogue repeating several times and fucking clunky combat. It's trying to be like The Last of Us but just isn't up to that standard. But when it lets you it's a fun game. I'm finally getting used to the motorbike controls (sort of) and hamfisting my way through the UI. I think Sony didn't give the developer a 2nd game simply because Days Gone wasn't up to par.
Thats a real shame, it plays beautifully on PC.
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Rossell
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Re: Currently Playing

Post by Rossell » Sun Oct 03, 2021 2:32 pm

Far Cry 4.

Just finished it. I'm going to miss this game though it frustrated me in places. Pagan Min such a great bad guy and as with all Far Cry games, a changed protagonist, and no happy ending.

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