What game are you playing?

[CTID]

I've played a little bit of the Elden Ring DLC but tbh most of my time spent gaming recently has been playing Selaco. That game fucks. If you like old school shooters, it's worth picking up. FEAR-esque combat built in the GZDOOM engine. Runs smooth, feels amazing, great music, (subjective but) great looking, and the early access version is basically a full game that's going to have 2 more campaigns added for free.

 

[wankerness]

Videogames are a weird thing to rank favorites over one's life, cause so many of them when you go back to them just suck thanks to improvements made to their ideas/tech. Like, I remember Mass Effect 1 blowing my goddam mind when it came out, and now if I go back to it, it's clunk city with repetitive environments and tons of awful elevator loading screens that didn't bug me back when that kind of thing was the norm.

Likewise with a lot of games that I loved on N64.

 

[pahulkster]

Not 100% or anything because I've played a lot of games I've enjoyed. Somewhat in order I guess.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Like, I remember Mass Effect 1 blowing my goddam mind when it came out, and now if I go back to it, it's clunk city with repetitive environments and tons of awful elevator loading screens that didn't bug me back when that kind of thing was the norm.

Oh, they still bothered me back then. Don't think I could go through it again now.

 

[Werecow]

I've played a little bit of the Elden Ring DLC but tbh most of my time spent gaming recently has been playing Selaco. That game fucks. If you like old school shooters, it's worth picking up. FEAR-esque combat built in the GZDOOM engine. Runs smooth, feels amazing, great music, (subjective but) great looking, and the early access version is basically a full game that's going to have 2 more campaigns added for free.

I've got that wishlisted, but waiting for full release till i play it. Does look pretty great. I still replay FEAR every couple years.

 

[Werecow]

Oh, they still bothered me back then. Don't think I could go through it again now.

I was such a big KOTOR fan when Mass Effect 1 came out, that i just hated it. Was this weird "arcade shooter" to me (the type i never played at the time), that i couldn't believe Bioware would make. I tried to give it another go 3 or 4 years ago, and yeh, still left me cold. I couldn't get past a couple hours. I'm sure there's a good story in there, but the gameplay is so boring to me.
Kind of depressing i couldn't get to experience the trilogy, as so many people talk about it.

 

[BlackMastodon]

I was such a big KOTOR fan when Mass Effect 1 came out, that i just hated it. Was this weird "arcade shooter" to me (the type i never played at the time), that i couldn't believe Bioware would make. I tried to give it another go 3 or 4 years ago, and yeh, still left me cold. I couldn't get past a couple hours. I'm sure there's a good story in there, but the gameplay is so boring to me.
Kind of depressing i couldn't get to experience the trilogy, as so many people talk about it.

Mass Effect is one of my favourite game series ever, but the first one was janky as all fuck. I bought 1 and 2 together so as soon as I finished 1 I jumped into 2 and the improvement in gameplay was pretty astounding (and jarring).

 

[Werecow]

Mass Effect is one of my favourite game series ever, but the first one was janky as all fuck. I bought 1 and 2 together so as soon as I finished 1 I jumped into 2 and the improvement in gameplay was pretty astounding (and jarring).

What improvements are there? ME1 seemed like you walked into a scene and just stood around in a shooting gallery for a little while, with a really small amount of powers/skills as well. Trouble is, i'm the type that won't normally play a series without starting from the start

 

[BlackMastodon]

What improvements are there? ME1 seemed like you walked into a scene and just stood around in a shooting gallery for a little while, with a really small amount of powers/skills as well. Trouble is, i'm the type that won't normally play a series without starting from the start

I think it was a totally different engine? The core gameplay was very similar but the combat was much smoother and faster, plus they implemented a cover system that let you snap pieces of cover and roll around to other ones to reposition. I'm sure there's a slew of other changes/upgrades but I haven't played them since 2011 or 2012 I think?

 

[gabito]

They improved most of that stuff in the remaster, it plays pretty similar to ME2 IIRC.

I still like and replay some if not most of the 25 games I listed once in a while. What happened before or after they were released doesn't matter to me. They're there for good reasons.

"Oh, I can't have favorites because my tastes might change in the future". Meh.

"Oh, I'm a different person now, my tastes are different than what they were when I chose X as a favorite". Then put something different in the list.

And if you don't want to have favorites then don't.

MGS3 > everything else. I know that because I'm right.

 

[Heretick]

Eh, I broadly disagree with regards to the sentiment of older games being harder to go back to/ not holding up. I played Final Fantasy 7 for the first time around 2014ish and, as you can see from my list, still enjoyed it significantly more than most Final Fantasy games I've played (and most games in general). I would also probably be far too young, in most people's opinion, to reasonably be expected to have Fallout 2 on my favorite games list, yet there it is. I think games that are ACTUALLY quality have always been made regardless of era, and very much stand the test of time. Outside of FF7, I've replayed literally everything on my list at least once within the last 2 or so years. But I dunno, maybe I'm just a wierdo. Case in point of me potentially being a weirdo (and to connect it to the other threads of conversation going on), I still think Mass Effect 1 is by far the best one, and even as a 4-5 year old (not even kidding, I won a $100 Cap'n Crunch Sweepstakes in '99, when I was all of 4 years old, and used that money to buy an N64) I thought most of the games on the N64 were... not worth playing, to put it kindly.

So it is what it is, I guess, but I really don't find ranking video games from your life any more strange and/or prone to nostalgia blindness than, say, albums or books.

 

[wankerness]

They improved most of that stuff in the remaster, it plays pretty similar to ME2 IIRC.

I still like and replay some if not most of the 25 games I listed once in a while. What happened before or after they were released doesn't matter to me. They're there for good reasons.

"Oh, I can't have favorites because my tastes might change in the future". Meh.

"Oh, I'm a different person now, my tastes are different than what they were when I chose X as a favorite". Then put something different in the list.

And if you don't want to have favorites then don't.

MGS3 > everything else. I know that because I'm right.

They didn't do much to the combat in ME1 in that remaster, I've played ME1 all the way through probably 7 or 8 times and the remaster once and the only real gameplay difference I remember was in the way the shitty vehicle drove. Maybe the controls were SLIGHTLY better, like you could actually get in and out of cover when you wanted to sometimes, as opposed to the original where it was awful.

ME1 is like, a wallowy shooter where going in cover is janky as hell and the main strategy is to get a really good weapon and just rambo stuff down with it and your powers before they can kill you. If you spec into the caster sorts of classes it's got some tactics, but they're all on such long cooldowns that it still seems like a clunky shooter. It's very stat-based.

ME2 is way, WAY more fluid and abilities mostly all have ~5 second cooldowns so there's a lot more power usage going on. However, there's also WAY more emphasis on being in cover, especially on the higher difficulties, so it feels sort of like a Gears of War game almost with all the damn cover shooting. It's not very stat-based, but your powers SUCK until they're upgraded, so it's definitely dependent on leveling up correctly.

ME3 eliminates some of the tedium with enemies having to be debuffed, adds a lot of group combo attacks, and also opens up the arenas to not all just be you going down a straight hallway with cover everywhere. It's also tuned easier than 2 - the highest difficulty certainly is harder than medium, but it's not like 2 where you can only peek out for a split second and also have to remove 2 layers of debuffs on everything. It's definitely my favorite of the three gameplaywise.

IMO 3 is really fun combatwise, 2 is decent as long as you don't do the highest difficulty, and 1 is pretty bad but it's not really the point. I think 3 and to a lesser degree 2 aged just fine combatwise. The clunky binary "paragon/renegade" morality system is something that really didn't age well though, I think.

 

[pahulkster]

Anybody like Andromeda lol? I don't even remember what all the negative hype was about but I played through it and liked it.

 

[Heretick]

The ME1 to Legendary Edition combat was actually quite different... within reason. They really did the bare minimum in most cases when it comes to LE, including keeping most of the in-game bugs intact, but the ME1 gameplay is one of the elements they changed the most. It's not, like, ridiculously overhauled, but it IS noticeably changed. The camera angle and reticule behavior while in combat were both tweaked to bring them more in line with 2 and 3, the guns feel punchier overall, and- the biggest difference- they added weapon subtypes. In the OG ME1, each gun in each category was functionally nearly identical; the only differences was bullet spread, firing speed, and heat buildup. LE added differing firetypes to each gun class, like changing some ARs into burst-only and single-shot style weapons as opposed to the original, wherein all ARs were fully automatic.

They also did change the Mako to be slightly easier to control, but the tradeoff was that it became way less versatile/ exploitable. I prefer the original Mako, tbh.

 

[gabito]

Anybody like Andromeda lol? I don't even remember what all the negative hype was about but I played through it and liked it.

I liked it. Not as much as the original trilogy but I liked it.

I think if they had made Andromeda 2 it would’ve been good.

 

[wankerness]

I didn't hate it but it was the worst by far of the four. The protagonist is a goggly eyed goof and I didn't care at all about her or her brother. The companions are all like, James from ME3 level (not the worst videogame companions ever but all definitely lowest tier as far as Mass Effect goes). I don't remember a lick of the plot, but know I didn't care. The "open world" sidequests makes that part of Dragon Age Inquisition look fun and vibrant in comparison. But those are all minor compared to its biggest sin - for some moronic reason they removed all ability to control your team's abilities, yet kept in the biotic combos and stuff from ME3, so it becomes dumb luck if they ever go off unless you just wait for your stupid teammates to hopefully cast the primer spell in an opportune place so you can detonate it. I don't know why on earth they did this, even the first ME lets you manually control all your teammates, and all three let you have it AI controlled if you want, but Andromeda forced it to be AI controlled and that was dogshit. Especially on higher difficulties.

 

[Alberto7]

I wanted a casual game I could just pick up and put down whenever, and ended up playing the demo for Dave the Diver on the Switch and... damn, that was a lot better than I thought it'd be. Bought the full game. Seems simple and casual enough but with enough depth to keep me interested. We'll see how the full game is.

 

[wankerness]

The ME1 to Legendary Edition combat was actually quite different... within reason. They really did the bare minimum in most cases when it comes to LE, including keeping most of the in-game bugs intact, but the ME1 gameplay is one of the elements they changed the most. It's not, like, ridiculously overhauled, but it IS noticeably changed. The camera angle and reticule behavior while in combat were both tweaked to bring them more in line with 2 and 3, the guns feel punchier overall, and- the biggest difference- they added weapon subtypes. In the OG ME1, each gun in each category was functionally nearly identical; the only differences was bullet spread, firing speed, and heat buildup. LE added differing firetypes to each gun class, like changing some ARs into burst-only and single-shot style weapons as opposed to the original, wherein all ARs were fully automatic.

They also did change the Mako to be slightly easier to control, but the tradeoff was that it became way less versatile/ exploitable. I prefer the original Mako, tbh.

The camera angle stuff could have been different, but it was subtle.

I didn't notice the AR thing at all cause I was playing as an adept, so I was only using pistols! That does sound like an actual change. Yeah, ARs were really boring in the original, but also all I ever used on classes that could use them cause they were so damn effective.

 

[wankerness]

I wanted a casual game I could just pick up and put down whenever, and ended up playing the demo for Dave the Diver on the Switch and... damn, that was a lot better than I thought it'd be. Bought the full game. Seems simple and casual enough but with enough depth to keep me interested. We'll see how the full game is.

That game's very popular. The only criticism I've seen is that it changes so much that it does a million things OK and nothing great, but I still am interested and going to get it when it eventually goes on sale on PS5.

Right now I'm trying to finish Another Crab's Treasure. This game is really curdling for me in the back third. It's getting really janky with framerate issues (I've had the whole game start chugging along at ~15 FPS until I totally exit and reload it more than once). It's also getting REALLY into levels that are way, WAY too complex and platform-heavy for the level of jank. Like, there are frequently complex, nimble platforming sections where if you miss a jump, you will either fall hundreds of yards into oblivion and respawn on the ledge you fell off, or sometimes, you can fall hundreds of yards, miss oblivion by an inch and instead land on a ledge that puts you 15 minutes back progress-wise. This game does not have a "homeward bone" equivalent and the checkpoints are as rare as Dark Souls 1 in a lot of cases, so this is an actual huge problem.

Also multiple times I've had the game decide that the ledge I fell off that I should be respawned on is a point just in midair where I can't possibly recover from, so my character just falls off a cliff again and again and again.

It's such buggy bullshit that I've had to make extensive use of the option menu's override "kill yourself" option to get unstuck. And I've turned on assist mode's "don't take fall damage" and "don't lose souls on death" due to the plethora of utter bullshit deaths due to jank I was experiencing. The only thing to make these extremely common bugs worse would be to actually suffer consequences other than wasted time.

I will say that the complex platforming chains are nowhere close to as bad as Hollow Knight's! But the level of jank is infinitely higher, that game was pretty flawless technically from what I remember.

One more thing I find absolutely infuriating but is by design is how if you go afk for a few seconds, your character will get out one of your healing items (they're kelp pods!) and start playing with it. As soon as you touch the controller again and wake him up, he gets surprised and drops it. However, if you're close to a cliff, he'll probably drop it off. So basically, the game punishes you for not using the pause button by making you lose a heal!!!

This game's gotten mostly really good reviews and it IS a really ambitious, unique indie game with a great aesthetic and a fantastic combat/gearing system, as well as a great look. But boy oh boy are the last couple levels just an awful experience for me.

 

[Heretick]

The camera angle stuff could have been different, but it was subtle.

I didn't notice the AR thing at all cause I was playing as an adept, so I was only using pistols! That does sound like an actual change. Yeah, ARs were really boring in the original, but also all I ever used on classes that could use them cause they were so damn effective.

They actually did it for every weapon type! They even rolled in some of the SMGs from 2 and 3 into the pistol category. The problem was that the standard, OG ME1-style semi-auto pistols tend to be the best, stat wise, so you can go through the entire game without equipping any of the auto or burst fire ones and not even realize. Every time I've tried anything other than the semi-auto pistols, I was... not enthused, haha. The shotguns also got some automatic choices and some slug-round ones, and the snipers got some semi-auto and three-round-burst options on top of the regular bolt action. Tbh, from my perspective, the different firing patterns are generally only a useful change on the ARs. I think maybe I found a burst sniper that was decent on one playthrough? But that was pretty much it.

Love a good Adept run. I'm usually an Infiltrator main myself!