What game are you playing?

[BlackMastodon]

I played through ME1 as a soldier my 1st 2 playthroughs per the advice of my buddy, which turned out to be not great advice tbh, but iirc the advice came from a place of "holy shit the cool downs are so long on biotics that you'll be dead by the time you can use a third one" so Rambo I did. I definitely relied on the AR's but agree that they felt really one dimensional and it ended up just being a game of chasing slightly better stats and spamming Concussive Shot and grenades. The changes y'all are taking about sound very welcome, and also are a reason why I liked ME2 guns so much more since there was way more variety even if there were way fewer options. I played as Vanguard in ME2 and 3 and had way more fun, especially in 3 where I could prime and detonate my own combos.

I didn't mind Andrommeda, overall; the gameplay was ridiculously smooth with the addition of the jump pack and class swap using the D-pad, but the story and characters absolutely suffered and felt like they all took a back seat.

 

[wankerness]

I played through ME1 as a soldier my 1st 2 playthroughs per the advice of my buddy, which turned out to be not great advice tbh, but iirc the advice came from a place of "holy shit the cool downs are so long on biotics that you'll be dead by the time you can use a third one" so Rambo I did. I definitely relied on the AR's but agree that they felt really one dimensional and it ended up just being a game of chasing slightly better stats and spamming Concussive Shot and grenades. The changes y'all are taking about sound very welcome, and also are a reason why I liked ME2 guns so much more since there was way more variety even if there were way fewer options. I played as Vanguard in ME2 and 3 and had way more fun, especially in 3 where I could prime and detonate my own combos.

I didn't mind Andrommeda, overall; the gameplay was ridiculously smooth with the addition of the jump pack and class swap using the D-pad, but the story and characters absolutely suffered and felt like they all took a back seat.

Soldier is what you want to play if you want to make the game easy, but it also makes it like the most boring gears of war ripoff ever. Especially with 1! They made some changes to the class in 2/3 that made it slightly more interesting but I still think it's the blandest class besides maybe sentinel. But at least sentinel has SOME offensive abilities!

I think I mostly ended up using the soldier as a sniper with slowdown in ME2/3. When Infiltrator already exists!

 

[Heretick]

Yeah, I've played through the trilogy ~8 or so times (and through 1 and 2 an additional 7 or 8 when I was really obsessed with ME in high school before 3 came out), and think I've played Soldier... once? There are just so many cooler options, lmao

 

[TedEH]

Anybody like Andromeda lol?

I'm on team "Andromeda was fine". Not the best one, but still perfectly fine. It seems like there was a weird trend for a while where if a game didn't match expectations before launch, it was a "bad game" according to the internet, and I think this was one of the victims of that. Reception to the game was much more brutal than warranted. I can't decide if at least that's better than the current trend of "I didn't like this game, so it must be because of a shadowy cabal of elites bullying the industry into being woke". Some days it feels like we're headed for another gamergate.

 

[TedEH]

It really is hard to list favourite games, since so many things are good for entirely different reasons.

 

[gabito]

Oh, Sonic 3. Love that one.

 

[CTID]

It really is hard to list favourite games, since so many things are good for entirely different reasons.
View attachment 146132

This is so close to my tastes that I'm actually borderline terrified that you're stalking me. The only disagreement I have is: You have 3 Tim Schafer games back to back but no Psychonauts???

 

[wankerness]

I just always think "hey, that's one of my favorite games cause I thought it ruled when I was 10," and then when I go back to play it I have no fun at all and it's like "what was I thinking?!" or "man, our expectations sure were low back then." Ex, the Super Star Wars games - I loved those things as a kid, but now I play them and it's like, "I hate this! Why is this so punishing and anti-fun?!" and I think a lot of it was cause publishers of action games back then had to try and justify their 60 dollar cartridge costs by making it take a long time to beat the games despite them only being like 3-4 hours long if you beat them without dying. Or just games like Goldeneye - I played multiplayer in that for many, many hundreds of hours so I'd have to say historically it's one of my favorite games ever, but today? That single player campaign is kind of terrible by modern standards! The simpler games from the time like Doom or Quake I have IMO aged way better than that, cause there's not really much in them to date them, while the ones like Goldeneye that were ambitious and had early iterations of things like mission objectives with talking to NPCs or destroying specific objects or stealthing past stuff are just a lot worse than later iterations of the same thing.

So like, the only favorites from back then I'd still probably put on a favorites list today are FFVI and Castlevania SOTN - I've played those many times over the years, they have some issues, but they mostly hold up and they still work as video game comfort food. Maybe the Donkey Kong Country games, too, and Turtles in Time. Then in the N64 era, probably Ocarina of Time - it's got a ton of clunk but the gameplay experience in it was mostly so smooth that it just feels like a cohesive video game instead of an ambitious thing trying new features that would require a few more years before becoming actually fun, like Goldeneye. And of course some PC games hold up alright - I think maybe Final Doom was my favorite of the FPS games. I liked the insane amounts of enemies and trend towards silliness in some of those maps more than the base Doom and Doom II games (and Ultimate Doom's new episode I didn't like as much cause it was lacking the new enemies/weapon from Doom II).

Perfect Dark holds up in a way cause of the 360 remake that made everything run smooth as silk and added solid online multiplayer - we had a TON of fun with that on xbox live cause it was a relic of a bygone era where shooter games weren't concerned with boring shit like weapon balance, and instead you had wild matches with things like everyone hanging out on opposite corners of the map piloting around missiles trying to hit each other, or matches spamming each other with N-bombs (I forget what they renamed them in the 360 port). I feel like multiplayer shooters peaked with Unreal Tournament and the trend after that in games like Halo, COD, and Counterstrike towards junk like regenerating health/shields, only being able to hold 2 weapons at once, and weapons all being variants on the same "stat pool" so nothing's IMBALANCED are all boring to me. Perfect Dark is the most fun I ever had on a console shooter in online multiplayer.

So basically my favorite games list would probably be heavily weighted towards modern stuff. I might have to try making it anyway.

I'm surprised Ted has Borderlands 2 on there. I played that game for many, many hundreds of hours, had a lot of fun on the first and second playthroughs for all characters and liked most of the DLC a ton, but boy did I resent it by the end. Just having to listen to all the goddam dialogue every single time I went through the campaign, having to go through the full campaign again every single time you wanted to unlock the next difficulty, the way the difficulty scaling worked making it so literally all enemy attacks would take you from full shields to 1 health on the first attack and FFYL mode the second, meaning the only viable single player builds were either BEE SHIELD AND KILL EVERYTHING INSTANTLY or 80% ABSORB SHIELD. Borderlands 3 was such a huge improvement in gameplay (and such a decline in anything related to story, but hey, at least you didn't have to listen to all the dialogue over and over like in 2). I also sorta prefer Borderlands 1 cause most of the characters got so brokenly overpowered by the time they were max level. Like, Siren in particular was practically unkillable so it was no problem playing single player except maybe on the raid boss. 2 forced you into co-op much more, and 3 was a nice balance back towards making single player fun again, even if you couldn't get nearly as busted as you could in 1.

I have Dishonored 1 and 2, I should play them sometime. I think I got like 2/3 through Dishonored 1 on PC a really long time ago and quit for some reason. I just tend to not like stealth games, they stress me out.

 

[CTID]

This was harder to make that I thought it'd be. There's probably a few I forgot that I'll feel stupid about in 20 minutes but oh well. They're kind of in order but they're also not in order at all.

 

[TedEH]

You have 3 Tim Schafer games back to back but no Psychonauts???

You're completely right. I even typed it in at one point and then got distracted and forgot or something. It definitely deserves a space in there.

then when I go back to play it I have no fun at all and it's like "what was I thinking?!"

I've never really had that problem. I can go back to the OGs and still have a great time. I replayed the Thief series a year or two ago. Still great. Majora's Mask gets regular replays on the OG system. Grim Fandango still hits all the marks. Perfect Dark, bad frame rate and all, I'm still perfectly happy with it.

I'm surprised Ted has Borderlands 2 on there. I played that game for many, many hundreds of hours, had a lot of fun on the first and second playthroughs for all characters and liked most of the DLC a ton, but boy did I resent it by the end. Just having to listen to all the goddam dialogue every single time I went through the campaign

Could be that I don't generally do replays or much post-game content in titles like this. The idea of "well, I was tired of the dialogue by the 3rd run through the campaign" is foreign to me, because I hit the credits and then move on to another game. I've played BL2 multiple times, but it was always with a year or more between runs. BL3 though - The characters were so obnoxious that I'm deterred from ever replaying it.

I have Dishonored 1 and 2, I should play them sometime. I think I got like 2/3 through Dishonored 1 on PC a really long time ago and quit for some reason. I just tend to not like stealth games, they stress me out.

Dishonored series is really good at the idea that stealth-failure is not really a failure state like it would be in something like Thief. You can go in all sneaky, then half way though get caught and just murder everyone like you'd do in any other game.

 

[wankerness]

I've never really had that problem. I can go back to the OGs and still have a great time. I replayed the Thief series a year or two ago. Still great. Majora's Mask gets regular replays on the OG system. Grim Fandango still hits all the marks. Perfect Dark, bad frame rate and all, I'm still perfectly happy with it.

I think it varies by game. Everything you listed here is like, an actual polished classic. I used to play a lot of stuff that was lauded at the time but IMO does not hold up. Donkey Kong 64 comes to mind with its INCREDIBLE time wasting (forcing you to return to a dk barrel whenever you see a pickup for a different character and then plod back to that location, and mixing and matching collectibles for all characters chaotically to maximize the amount of time you frustratingly spend just switching characters). Super Star Wars/ESB/ROTJ with its insane difficulty spikes and user-unfriendliness and some badly dated mode 7 sequences. Shadows of the Empire, Castlevania 64 with the super wooden controls and awful floaty platforming. Etc. I was willing to put up with that kind of thing at the time cause of the novelty and "spectacle" of the time but by and large they do not hold up at all as soon as the technical aspects are no longer impressive. Star Fox 64 holds up incredibly well cause it has a good aesthetic, mostly solid frame rate, the controls are incredibly smooth, and it just still feels good. Mario 64 has a lot of jank, especially with the camera, but again still feels good to play. Something like Siphon Filter or Winback? Hell naw.

Could be that I don't generally do replays or much post-game content in titles like this. The idea of "well, I was tired of the dialogue by the 3rd run through the campaign" is foreign to me, because I hit the credits and then move on to another game. I've played BL2 multiple times, but it was always with a year or more between runs. BL3 though - The characters were so obnoxious that I'm deterred from ever replaying it.

With Borderlands, I think of that game being one like Diablo 3 where much of the point of the game IS the endgame. The systems of the game are all designed around getting the full endgame skill points, and starting to farm all the fancy weapons that you can't even acquire till higher difficulties. The campaign's first playthrough is kind of the tutorial with a game like that - you're getting crappy "basic" weapons for the most part and you're replacing them constantly, instead of figuring out a "build." I mean, plenty of people just play through it once and are done, but I always took those as being like World of Warcraft or something where in many respects the game doesn't start until you're done leveling. With most action games I don't bother at all with NG+ or anything but with Borderlands, Diablo 3, and MMOs I feel like I haven't scratched the surface until I've spent time in endgame. Unlike most other action RPGs where you are forming the build organically as the game goes on (ex Elden Ring - you are actively upgrading the weapon you'll very possibly still be using at the end of the game as soon as you acquire it, which is often fairly early on).

Dishonored series is really good at the idea that stealth-failure is not really a failure state like it would be in something like Thief. You can go in all sneaky, then half way though get caught and just murder everyone like you'd do in any other game.

Good, that's the kind of stealth I can deal with. Uncharted 4, Far Cry, Sekiro, and later AC games were like that, too. When I inevitably screwed it up and everyone attacked me, it was fine as long as I'd at least taken out a bit of the crowd before messing up!

 

[CTID]

Good, that's the kind of stealth I can deal with. Uncharted 4, Far Cry, Sekiro, and later AC games were like that, too. When I inevitably screwed it up and everyone attacked me, it was fine as long as I'd at least taken out a bit of the crowd before messing up!

I would even argue that Dishonored 1 especially is VERY much built around that concept. One of the main criticisms I have with it (and it's by no means a dealbreaker to me) is how many more options you have to murder every enemy (sword, gun, crossbow bolts, incendiary bolts, grenades, springrazors, certain powers are designed specifically to kill) than to be stealthy and/or non-lethal (sneak behind enemies and choke them, sleep darts). I still adore DH1 but 2 expands the non lethal options a bit imo, and also has 2 of my favorite levels in any game: Clockwork Mansion and A Crack In The Slab. God, those games are good

 

[TedEH]

I think I read somewhere that Dishonored wasn't originally supposed to be a stealth game per-se, it was meant to be an im-sim with stealth as an option, but never required. Which is what it is, technically, but for marketing reasons "it's a stealth game".

With Borderlands, I think of that game being one like Diablo 3 where much of the point of the game IS the endgame.

I don't think I'd agree when it comes to Borderlands. I just can't get into "endgames" because I don't play to try to reach the end of the mechanical systems, I play to reach the end of the story or experience the game implies it's trying to tell. Maybe there's 100 rewards left to collect afterwards, yeah, I know the most powerful weapon in a game might not be unlockable until 300 hours after the credits have rolled, and games are designed to reward (or milk) the players who want to do that, but there's really often no actual meaningful (to me) content past that point, and I've got a backlog waiting for me. The story is done. The bad guy is dead. Why keep going? Especially in a game like BL where much of the mechanical makeup of the game is grind. The grind is justified during the campaign, but I'm not the kind of gamer who grinds to grind. I could not care any less about optimizing builds and maxing every number and collecting everything that isn't welded to the floor (except in Thief, where that's the point).

In a game like Mario Odyssey, the "endgame" is meaningful content because it's effectively a puzzle game. Maybe in a game like Skyrim, you could say there's meaningful endgame content because the world continues to have stories to tell if you haven't explored much. But BL is grind - that's what the game is. Get mission, shoot things, loot things, repeat. Once the story is done, nothing drives that unless you want to just live in that sandbox for a while. BL side-quests are Objective+Shoot+Loot with some edgy dialogue for spice.

Designers know they're working with three groups of people - those who will stop playing in 5 hours because they got bored or distracted or didn't like the game, those who will stop playing when they've decided the experience is done (by hitting the credits or bouncing off a difficulty curve or something), and those who will pour their lives into the game until every number has maxed out. The existence of a lot of post-game content isn't an indication that it's the "intended" way to play a game, just that it's acknowledged that some audiences want to do that - I'm just not part of that group.

 

[wankerness]

I don't think I'd agree when it comes to Borderlands. I just can't get into "endgames" because I don't play to try to reach the end of the mechanical systems, I play to reach the end of the story or experience the game implies it's trying to tell. Maybe there's 100 rewards left to collect afterwards, yeah, I know the most powerful weapon in a game might not be unlockable until 300 hours after the credits have rolled, and games are designed to reward (or milk) the players who want to do that, but there's really often no actual meaningful (to me) content past that point, and I've got a backlog waiting for me. The story is done. The bad guy is dead. Why keep going? Especially in a game like BL where much of the mechanical makeup of the game is grind. The grind is justified during the campaign, but I'm not the kind of gamer who grinds to grind. I could not care any less about optimizing builds and maxing every number and collecting everything that isn't welded to the floor (except in Thief, where that's the point).

In a game like Mario Odyssey, the "endgame" is meaningful content because it's effectively a puzzle game. Maybe in a game like Skyrim, you could say there's meaningful endgame content because the world continues to have stories to tell if you haven't explored much. But BL is grind - that's what the game is. Get mission, shoot things, loot things, repeat. Once the story is done, nothing drives that unless you want to just live in that sandbox for a while. BL side-quests are Objective+Shoot+Loot with some edgy dialogue for spice.

Designers know they're working with three groups of people - those who will stop playing in 5 hours because they got bored or distracted or didn't like the game, those who will stop playing when they've decided the experience is done (by hitting the credits or bouncing off a difficulty curve or something), and those who will pour their lives into the game until every number has maxed out. The existence of a lot of post-game content isn't an indication that it's the "intended" way to play a game, just that it's acknowledged that some audiences want to do that - I'm just not part of that group.

With borderlands 2 especially, I would argue it's a Diablo sort of thing where the endgame is the point cause you get skill points REALLY slowly in that game. You only just start to unlock the good powers right as the game ends. So functionally, the game is mostly just using guns to shoot at enemies until you're in NG+ when a build starts to come together and things actually get really fun and fluid with much, much bigger class differences. Like, a lot of the classes in that game have a gigantic cooldown on their ability and the ability just sucks besides until you're quite a high level. You can still obviously beat the game and see all the STORY, but I guess I enjoyed the class mechanics and the game sort of gates a lot of those behind NG+ just due to how high level you have to be to have enough skill points to even start seeing how good the abilities are. Like, the siren in particular just has a garbage ability for most of the first playthrough, until you've gotten the cooldown massively reduced and it starts debuffing the enemy you use it on so it becomes a core part of gameplay instead of a crappy thing you can use like once every 60 seconds that just stops an enemy from hitting you for about 2 seconds.

If you're playing for story then absolutely there's no point past the first playthrough. But like, to even start to enjoy the class mechanics with some of those characters I think you had to get through NG+, and then if you get hooked by the "grind" (going for the really good weapons to make it possible to clear high difficulties) then it was like two or three more cycles after that. I think I usually got through all the DLC and the first NG+ cycle and stopped cause that was where it turned into a painful grind and you'd start getting 1 shot by everything.

Long winded way of saying I think the game has a curve where the gameplay is actually a lot better after the first playthrough, especially on BL2, which for me is a big reason why I'd categorize it like an MMO or Diablo, and that's not really a grind, just burning through the story as fast as possible a second time to get all the EXP from bosses and stuff.

 

[wankerness]

I'm playing Robocop: Rogue City again, I'm liking it a lot more as I get in further.

I died to the first Ed-209 a whole bunch of times. I guess putting all my skill points into "get more experience from reading news clippings" was not a good choice for an early boss fight. Now that I've got points into things that increase survivability and damage I'm having a lot more fun.

 

[TedEH]

You only just start to unlock the good powers right as the game ends. So functionally, the game is mostly just using guns to shoot at enemies until you're in NG+ when a build starts to come together and things actually get really fun and fluid with much, much bigger class differences.

I guess it's sort of like.... to what end? Now I've unlocked the best character and optimized my play style and balanced the cooldowns and really got into the rhythm of things, so now I'm prepared to.... uh..... do the same quest again....? But easier? Or harder? With a cool hat this time? I understand it, it's a sort of intrinsic goal for a lot of people, there's an audience for it, so I'm glad people get something out of endgame content, but to me it feels like a waste of time once all the major extrinsic goals are accomplished. Borderlands games aren't really short campaigns - that's a lot of content to burn through. I think I've completed the BL2 story twice, and Steam puts me at almost 100 hours. BL3 has about 100 hours and I only played through it once. Then again, I don't trust play timers on Steam for a bunch of reasons, so I dunno if that's accurate.