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[Gorgon]

I'm not really sure that the Fallout series isn't hardcore anymore, though, I just don't think it is what I am looking for in a game. They chose to go nuts with the building and defense aspect and move away from the skill and character development that I loved. By all accounts it is a superior shooter and action game than in the past, but again that isn't what I want from Fallout. They also continue to make fantastic exploration simulators, which eat up a lot of hours. In the end I didn't like Fallout 4, but I can hardly fault them for going after a different audience, and I will always be glad that we got New Vegas out of the revival.

 

edit: The Wolfenstien stuff is fantastic, btw. Again, not really my cup of tea, but those games have a ton of style.

The Fallout basebuilding does nothing though. It's all cosmetic, slapped on in response to the success of Skyrim mods and Minecraft. The settlement defence missions are totally uninteresting. The main story is broken, specifically it's faction alliances that should make certain things impossible but do not. They have made no attempt to fix it. Probably realising that it would take too long. 

[Gorgon]

All all the enemies black swirly things and what are the mudcrabs from Half Life called... Sounds a bit one note. 

[Hurlshort]

I don't disagree with any of that Gorgon. Heck, I plugged nearly 40 hours into the game and feel like I got nowhere in that time. It was unrewarding for me.  

[Katphood]

I never get the Bioshock hate, played all 3 games and enjoyed Bioshock 2 the most. I also played System Shock 2 back in the days. I thought it was scarier compared to Bioshock but I still prefer the decadent vibe of Bioshock. Somehow, hacking a computer ain't the same as watching a floating plasmid chase a splicer...personal taste I guess.

Edited May 8, 2017 by Katphood

[SonicMage117]

I loved the last Bioshock but considering that I got it for extremely cheap, that may have factored into it. I thought it was the most interesting and balanced of thr 3 but judging by thr video, seems like I'd enjoy Prey more than any of the Bioshocks. Sometimes I think the Bioshock games are overrated - as alot of triple A games are these days.

 

As far as Fallout 4, there was a few great moments here and there - I'll say this, I love the engine, color pallette and art style that Fallout 4 utilizes. Much better than the dead grays and browns that was in FO3 but other than that it's hard to say that anything in FO4 was "quality". Even the character creation is outdone by Saints Row 2 if we're to be honest. I must confess though, I've never tried mods with FO4.

 

What was the better Fallout game: Fallout 3 or Fallout 4? I'm not going to put it up against New Vegas because it's not by Obsidian lol

 

As for Skyrim, my love and hate relationship comes from the opposite side of the spectrum. Skyrim (to me) isn't really anything good without mods. I found the map, the dialogue and the story to be horrid. The dungeons, caves, etc were poorly designed in my opinion. I have 50 hours of just fiddling with mods and probably only half of that of playing the game. I enjoyed Oblivion much more. Like FO4, I felt like Skyrim was unfocused.

Edited May 8, 2017 by SonicMage117

[Fenixp]

I never get the Bioshock hate, played all 3 games and enjoyed Bioshock 2 the most. I also played System Shock 2 back in the days. I thought it was scarier compared to Bioshock but I still prefer the decadent vibe of Bioshock. Somehow, hacking a computer ain't the same as watching a floating plasmid chase a splicer...personal taste I guess.

I too enjoyed Bioshock 2 most of the three as I felt it had the best level design and gameplay mechanics. I did enjoy storyline in Infinite more, but... That's not necessarily what I play games for.

 

At any rate, when it comes to Bioshock hate (or "Why I like it less than System Shock" in my case), I've been with SS games since the original, and I still do prefer it to System Shock 2. Why is that? Because the original System Shock gave me a feeling that I am actually on board of a space station where there are no mocked doors, no pretend cabins or whatever - the whole station was there for me to explore, room by room, floor by floor, with many emergent gameplay elements that made the game unforgettable.

 

And what really made the station feel alive to me was that the floors weren't just 'levels' of some sort - they were actual parts of the station with function and purpose, and if you wanted to achieve a goal of some description, you wouldn't achieve it in the next level in line but instead by going to the appropriate part of the station, which often involved backtracking - but backtracking wasn't a problem as, once you have unlocked the station, navigation was fast and natural. Add to that an excellent antagonist and intriguing storyline and you have a game that you don't forget.

 

While I liked System Shock 2, especially for being a horror game (that the original didn't attempt to be, not really), what I did not like was that it seemed to stray away from the original's design. While it still tried to keep a logical structure, the game usually had everything locked down tight until it was necessary for the player, having very little in a way of optional areas you won't ever need to visit. System Shock 2, while still leaning more towards the System Shock 1 way of things, was designed a bit more like a traditional chain of levels that you do in sequence, very rarely giving you a reason to go back. There were more design decisions in SS2 that I disliked, namely it facing away from gear checks in favor of skill checks, but that's for another wall of text.

 

And then Bioshock, selling itself as the spiritual successor of System Shock, came along. While the natural structure and brilliance of System Shock's levels also sometimes leaked through, it was structured like a much more traditional shooter, usually keeping player to a single viable path with the possibility to backtrack... If you really needed to. Yes, this path sometimes got more complex and there were larger rooms and forks - that all ultimately culminated in a single way regardless. Storytelling was rather neat in this one, that much is true - but by omitting Shocky level design alone it has lost a lot of appeal for me. Still, it was about the best we got since SS2, so... I enjoyed it for what it was.

 

So now, Prey happens, and it approaches design of its space station exactly like System Shock 1 did. You get a gigantic place to explore with all sorts of optional areas to browse through, with all kinds of possibilities of reaching an objective by many different paths that can even come from entirely different parts of the station, and as an addition to that you get space flight, being able to physically navigate around the station. Now this is the approach I have personally been always waiting for - it's open, it's smart, and it allows you to specify parts of station as your safe zones, your crafting zones etc., places you'll be returning to regularly because objectives have you revisiting the same parts of the station which slowly evolve with the story. Hell, they went to the lengths of giving each crew member a place to sleep, a place to work and you can find corpses of each and every one of them. Or you may find some still alive...

Edited May 8, 2017 by Fenixp

[Majek]

Wall of texts that keep mentioning Prey in favorable comparison to System Shock 1. Guess i'll really have to play this in the summer and hope it's true.

 

And then hope someone makes a game that can be a successor to Thief.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Styx is pretty similar to Thief IMO.

[Katphood]

Next stop: Bethesda acquires the rights to the Turok franchise and makes the Jurassic Park Tycoon everyone has been waiting for.

[Chilloutman]

Next stop: Bethesda acquires the rights to the Turok franchise and makes the Jurassic Park Tycoon everyone has been waiting for.

 

I would actually like that xD

[Zoraptor]

When it comes to games Bethesda published, only Dishonored 2 and Rage are not technically proficient. Everything else is stellar, perfomance and functionality-wise. It's only Bethesda themselves who are poor developers. (and even that is arguable, there's a reason why their games are a buggy mess - which doesn't excuse them in face of the consumer, obviously)

 

Their initial forays into publishing resulted in some fairly to terribly inept stuff- their Star Trek titles, the Cthulu titles, FONV, Rogue Warrior, Hunted: the Demon Forge etc.

 

They also haven't published an independently produced game since Hunted, and the real reason why most people loathe Bethesda as a publisher- their attempts to constructively bankrupt their partners so as to buy them on the cheap per Human Head and Prey 2 and Arkane and Dishonoured where it worked. They own the studios that have made every game of theirs since 2011. It's probably most accurate to say that their owned studios excluding the Bethesda mothership have recently been technically able while their external projects and anything from BGS themselves are near uniformly problematic, technically.

 

the original System Shock gave me a feeling that I am actually on board of a space station where there are no mocked doors, no pretend cabins or whatever - the whole station was there for me to explore, room by room, floor by floor, with many emergent gameplay elements that made the game unforgettable.

 

While I understand that feeling SS1 actually had dummy doors etc, it also had completely illogical layouts in some places designed to be gamey and provide jump challenges and utilise the gravity system pointlessly (from a 'realism' standpoint) rather than be a space station and in terms of making sense it had a severe #1 and a #2 problem- not a single toilet anywhere on the station. SS1 and 2 are pretty comparable on the verisimilitude test though I can only advise not thinking about such things too closely since it inevitably ruins things.

 

(in terms of verisimilitude Bioshock's biggest problem is the meta problem of pointing out that you are an automaton obeying Fontlas's every command then doing nothing about it afterwards and leaving you still slavishly obeying commands, rather than anything particularly level design wise except for the obvious ones about being on the bottom of the sea and how a city there should be designed)

[Fenixp]

While I understand that feeling SS1 actually had dummy doors etc

It did? Hm.

 

it also had completely illogical layouts in some places designed to be gamey and provide jump challenges and utilise the gravity system pointlessly (from a 'realism' standpoint) rather than be a space station and in terms of making sense it had a severe #1 and a #2 problem- not a single toilet anywhere on the station.

Yeah, I never said Citadel was realistic - it most certainly wasn't, many parts of the station were completely nonsensical. It had believable general structure which is what impressed me at the time, as in division into individual floors with each having distinct function and you as the player being required to use those floors for their functions throughout the game, either as a part of the story or to gain some benefits. It also had nice bits of detailing like carpets in the quarters for the station's elite and such (and such a thing as crew quarters existed). That's what constituted "believable space station" back when System Shock was released since most other first person perspective games were much more abstract.

 

That said, Prey impressed me all over again by taking that basic idea and polishing it to near perfection. So not only does each crewmember get a cabin, workplace and physical location for themselves, there's also toilets, cafeterias and so on. Hell, there's a PR department on board of the station, trying to spin the evil corporation BS into something digestible by public. There are station-wide announcements running completely in the background that react to timeflow of the station, wishing you good night or giving tidbits of information tied to the time and purpose of each zone. Oh and no mock doors. For real this time.

 

It's still not perfect, but it's certainly the best attempt I've ever seen.

Edited May 8, 2017 by Fenixp

[Keyrock]

SEGA tweeted this image:

 

 

Vanquish PC port incoming? 

[SonicMage117]

I wish Sega would get back to franchises like Jet Set Radio, Ecco The Dolphin, Chu Chu Rocket and such

[Zoraptor]

 

While I understand that feeling SS1 actually had dummy doors etc

It did? Hm.

 

Yeah, and worse than that some of the dummy doors went to 'impossible' positions ie there was actually another passageway on the other side of the door. Not that much though, and mostly on the Exec level that I remember*.

 

I know what you mean about 'realism' though, that's why I like 'verisimilitude' a lot more since it's about suspension of disbelief. When it comes right down to it there isn't a great deal of 'realism' in most games, even ones people think of as being 'realistic'. Quite apart from the shonky science something like Stalker has far too many deaths- add them up and it would be in the 10ks per year- to be realistic and most games have you slaughtering hundreds if not thousands more or less by yourself etc. It's all about it not being obviously unrealistic unless you think about it. I certainly wouldn't criticise either System Shock for verisimilitude given theirs is amongst the best.

 

That's why I don't like the Bioshock twist very much though. It's beautifully executed and in retrospect very well foreshadowed but its fundamental problem is that it points out the narrative system of most mission based games- you have to do objectives, you can't decide as Mike Thorton or JC Denton to just bugger off to Fiji instead even without a Fontlas compelling you- and thus breaks the fourth wall; but that is all it does. Once you know the Fontlas connection you still have to obey the new voice in your head just as much as if it was adding a 'would you kindly' at the end. It points out the narrative flaw then promptly ignores it from that point on, and if you're going to do that you might as well not point out the flaw in the first place.

 

*I did some work on converting SS1 levels some time ago, so I know most of the levels back to front- which is unfortunately not necessarily conducive to appreciating them as levels. The ramp jump/ 'nice jump human' set piece is fantastic when playing it and not thinking about it too deeply, not so much if you try and work out a reason to have it set up that way (why is there a ramp there etc?) in the first place.

Edited May 8, 2017 by Zoraptor

[Majek]

SEGA tweeted this image:

 

 

Vanquish PC port incoming? 

That's both awseome and annoying at the same time. Awesome because this is one game that i've wanted to play in very high resolution since they first introduced them. But annoying because i know i'll start to think about crazy hardware because of it. And crazy hardware like 4k HDR 144+hz monitors will be available later this year.

So it might have been better if there's also a PS4 version along with PC. PS4Pro is certainly cheaper than a new monster graphic card with 4k input.

 

As for the game itself. I do wonder if i'm still capable and willing to suffer to beat the game on God Hard.

[Fenixp]

Wall of texts that keep mentioning Prey in favorable comparison to System Shock 1. Guess i'll really have to play this in the summer and hope it's true.

 

And then hope someone makes a game that can be a successor to Thief.

I'd like to point out that I also really enjoyed Dishonored games. For different reasons than Thief games, but still.

 

*I did some work on converting SS1 levels some time ago, so I know most of the levels back to front- which is unfortunately not necessarily conducive to appreciating them as levels. The ramp jump/ 'nice jump human' set piece is fantastic when playing it and not thinking about it too deeply, not so much if you try and work out a reason to have it set up that way (why is there a ramp there etc?) in the first place.

Look, the ramp was fine. The ramp was Edward Diego's leisure transportation device that had some of the essential bits of the station on the other side of it. All good. But what the hell is this!?

Imagine having to navigate a labyrinth every morning while going to work! There was a fair amount of corpses within these walls (including actually inside the walls), and I'm willing to bet most people there died of dehydration even before the crisis on Citadel station. Nobody bothered to clean out the bodies for they were too preoccupied with trying to get out themselves. In fact the smell could be used to ease navigation.

[Katphood]

Agents of Mayhem Official Story Trailer:

 

 

Still looks boring.

 

 

Also:

 

[Wrath of Dagon]

Their initial forays into publishing resulted in some fairly to terribly inept stuff- their Star Trek titles, the Cthulu titles, FONV, Rogue Warrior, Hunted: the Demon Forge etc.

What? They only published one Cthulhu title, and it's fantastic. And so's FONV. Two of the greatest games ever made.

[SonicMage117]

I'd like to point out that I also really enjoyed Dishonored games. For different reasons than Thief games, but still

Yeah...

Strangely, Dishonored was the perfect spiritial successor to Thief. Especially considering how bad Thief 3 and 4 both were. Dishonored has that awesome stealth feeling that no other game really achieves.

Agents of Mayhem Official Story Trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yhJdqJ9iSAStill looks boring. :(Also:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pLOTjfXkCY

Strange that Butcher is in that video for releases this week, it's officially been out as a complete game since October last year. Edited May 9, 2017 by SonicMage117

[Wrath of Dagon]

I thought Dishonored was more about super powers and gadgets than stealth. It doesn't even have a light meter.

[SonicMage117]

Dishonored has a huge emphasis on Stealth.

 

It rewards you for not being seen by anyone and taking the non-lethal approach. Of course you can finish the game guns-blazing Wolfenstein style too but that's not going to get you the infamous "Ghost Achievement" which you can only obtain by playing the game without alerting anyone at all.

[Fenixp]

It doesn't even have a light meter.

Because Dishonored doesn't do the frankly ridiculous thing where guards can't see you when you're in mild shadow with all light sources projecting like 5 inches of light around them. It also doesn't do the ridiculous thing where stepping on a hard surface would explode your steps all over the place. Seriously, Thief was as much of a tech demo as it was a proper game and to an extent, I'm glad Dishonored looked away from the approach, altho it did sometimes create interesting situations.

 

Incidentally, there's both sound based on surface you're stepping on and hiding in shadows implemented in both Dishonored games, it's just not nearly as pronounced - just generally not making any sound and staying out of sight being the most important principles.

 

Strangely, Dishonored was the perfect spiritial successor to Thief. Especially considering how bad Thief 3 and 4 both were. Dishonored has that awesome stealth feeling that no other game really achieves

I have finished both Dishonored games as Ghost with Clean Hands, so I do have a bunch of experience with them. However, the most important distinction that pushes Dishonored and Thief apart is that the former is a power fantasy while latter is ... Well, the exact opposite. In Dishonored, you know that the only reason everybody is still alive is your benevolence. In Thief, it's mostly because you're not a fighter and getting into major conflict gets you killed (well, in principle. Most of the guards in most levels ended up being knocked out anyway, but that's failure on part of Thief's mechanics moreso than anything else)

 

And that's what is making Thief and Dishonored very different games. Thief is designed so that you have to constantly be on your toes with unpredictable patrol patterns, overwhelming numbers and even a bunch of levels that'll scare the **** out of you purely due to these principles. Dishonored, on the other hand, is designed in such a way that player always feels in control - short, predictable patrols, enemies that can't look up for you to feel like a "predator surveying from above" etc. So at the end of the day the two games end up feeling very different. It plays a major role in level design too - there's always a few passages that are completely safe for the player, where you don't have to shiver in a tiny hiding spot, hoping to not get spotted. The only trick is finding them.

Edited May 9, 2017 by Fenixp

[Katphood]

Sources: leaked Assassin's Creed: Origins image is real(Eurogamer.net)

[Mamoulian War]

Probably another vertical slice. The real game will be looking at least two grades worse :-P