What game are you playing?

[wankerness]

I started playing FFXVI, so far I'm really into it. The voiceacting and story are actually good so far. It seems like it's heavily inspired by Game of Thrones but with huge monsters (Shiva, Ifrit etc) tied to summoners thrown into the mix. The combat is good, it feels kind of like Nier Automata. So far I've been playing on the "combat mode" as opposed to the "story mode" that makes it easier, and I haven't used any of the assist items it gives you, but we'll see if I eventually switch to it - a lot of the fights are a little damage-spongey with it taking five or more minutes to beat down some miniboss enemy. The music is absolutely top-notch, the big Phoenix/Ifrit fight had the best boss music I've heard since Nier Automata. I just got through what I assume was the demo (where you finally get the title splash) and I'm excited to play more. The tons of F bombs in the dialogue makes it seem a little try-hard in being mature, but it's a minor complaint, the voice acting and dialogue is leagues ahead of the wooden crap I heard in what little I played of the FFVII remake. The graphics are about the best I've ever seen, unsurprisingly.

Basically this is making it look like FF might be back in business as the big prestige series that pushes the technical envelope while also being good games. I think that kinda hasn't been the case with the series since 13 was so unpopular (even though I do recall that game's graphics blowing me away when I first saw them).

 

[gabito]

Hm, I might try that one in the future then. Not really into Final Fantasy or JRPGs in general, I played FFXV but never finished it and also some of the SNES ones, but it might be worth buying it when it goes on sale.

The demo looks good.

 

[wankerness]

Hm, I might try that one in the future then. Not really into Final Fantasy or JRPGs in general, I played FFXV but never finished it and also some of the SNES ones, but it might be worth buying it when it goes on sale.

The demo looks good.

From what I've played so far this is less of an RPG than the God of War remakes. It's just pure action game with really heavy story emphasis that happens to have leveling (you can't choose the stat upgrades, they're static) and some skill trees.

 

[BlackMastodon]

I started playing FFXVI, so far I'm really into it. The voiceacting and story are actually good so far. It seems like it's heavily inspired by Game of Thrones but with huge monsters (Shiva, Ifrit etc) tied to summoners thrown into the mix. The combat is good, it feels kind of like Nier Automata. So far I've been playing on the "combat mode" as opposed to the "story mode" that makes it easier, and I haven't used any of the assist items it gives you, but we'll see if I eventually switch to it - a lot of the fights are a little damage-spongey with it taking five or more minutes to beat down some miniboss enemy. The music is absolutely top-notch, the big Phoenix/Ifrit fight had the best boss music I've heard since Nier Automata. I just got through what I assume was the demo (where you finally get the title splash) and I'm excited to play more. The tons of F bombs in the dialogue makes it seem a little try-hard in being mature, but it's a minor complaint, the voice acting and dialogue is leagues ahead of the wooden crap I heard in what little I played of the FFVII remake. The graphics are about the best I've ever seen, unsurprisingly.

Basically this is making it look like FF might be back in business as the big prestige series that pushes the technical envelope while also being good games. I think that kinda hasn't been the case with the series since 13 was so unpopular (even though I do recall that game's graphics blowing me away when I first saw them).

The rave reviews of FFXVI make me actually really want to try it in the future. What are you playing it on?

 

[CTID]

The rave reviews of FFXVI make me actually really want to try it in the future. What are you playing it on?

It's - at least temporarily - exclusive to PS5. Probably for the next 6 months to a year, I'd guess

 

[wankerness]

The rave reviews of FFXVI make me actually really want to try it in the future. What are you playing it on?

Ps5, it’s an exclusive right now at least.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Perfect, more reason to save my money. Wonder if they'll do a PC port eventually, and if it would be any good.

 

[wankerness]

Perfect, more reason to save my money. Wonder if they'll do a PC port eventually, and if it would be any good.

They said they were going to do a pc port, but also suggested it would be a while. Not sure what that means! They released FFVII remake on PC and I think it was your typical PC port these days - buggy for a while, but mostly fine now.

 

[TedEH]

I'm a little late to where the Thief conversation went - but I'll add that Thief 2 is, IMO, not as much a "map pack" as a refinement of Thief 1. Thief 1 did a lot of cool things, but you can really tell it was the first of its kind. The second one doubled down on what worked and threw out some things that didn't. It added another level of environmental storytelling, the level design is excellent for the time, etc. Given that you can get those games for so cheap, I think it's always worth giving 2 a shot.

 

[CTID]

I'm a little late to where the Thief conversation went - but I'll add that Thief 2 is, IMO, not as much a "map pack" as a refinement of Thief 1. Thief 1 did a lot of cool things, but you can really tell it was the first of its kind. The second one doubled down on what worked and threw out some things that didn't. It added another level of environmental storytelling, the level design is excellent for the time, etc. Given that you can get those games for so cheap, I think it's always worth giving 2 a shot.

I think that's fair to say. My point was more that on its face, the graphics are the same, the UI and menus are the same, the controls and (I think most or all?) tools are the same. The level design is better and there's way less focus on the levels with zombies. I'm just not 100% convinced that if someone straight up didn't like 1, that 2 would change their mind. But I also do think it's a much better game just from the better level design, so I'd be totally happy to be wrong on that. I just wish more people in general liked immersive sims and that Arkane wasn't basically the only studio making them, especially after Redfall.

 

[StevenC]

I want to buy Pikmin 1&2, but also have other games to finish first and I want it physical. But Pikmin 4 comes out before the 1&2 physical edition so I might not want to play it anymore after that.

 

[Ralyks]

I'm at the point where I met the games Cid in FFXVI. Can he get any more bass in his voice? But yeah, I'm digging this game so far. Although gotta say, the end of the Phoenix/Ifrit bit actuality made me... Slightly uncomfortable for dinner reason.

CoffeeTalk Episode 2. Such a good game to get a little baked and chill out to.

 

[wankerness]

Ffxvi is so good. It completely fixes the biggest problems with ffxv’s story, making absolutely sure you can actually tell what’s going on and never assuming you watched some stupid anime or something. The way you can pause the game at any time and see wiki entries for the characters/factions in the current cutscene/mission is a feature that should be in all story-heavy games going forwards. This would have been incredible in Witcher 3.

Also the story is just good so far, as are the characters.

 

[Ralyks]

The way you can pause the game at any time and see wiki entries for the characters/factions in the current cutscene/mission is a feature that should be in all story-heavy games going forwards.

I was saying to my friend the same thing, and specifically cited MGS and Skyrim as examples of what a HUGE help a feature like this would be.

 

[wankerness]

I'm at the second timejump in FFXVI (guessing maybe like 1/3 of the way through? Maybe less? I think I've been playing for close to 20 hours). The worst thing I can say about this game is it absolutely inundates you with lengthy fights. Like, you'll frequently fight multiple minibosses and then a multi-phase boss right in a row. The game treats this in a way I find weird. Your consumables do NOT reset between fights, nor does your health. However, if you die, they DO reset, and it starts you on whatever "checkpoint" in the fight you were at. So super-punishing multistage boss fights suddenly become trivial when you discover you can just die on the second phase and get all your potions and your health back. It begs the question as to why don't they just reset when the phase starts, since dying doesn't seem to have any punishment other than the boss health resetting to the start of the phase, and loadtimes are seriously like 3 seconds so no punishment there.

I'm guessing the NG+ unlocked difficulty might not give you your potions/health back on dying, in which case the game would have an entirely different balancing problem, cause you can only hold 4 wimpy potions and 3 good potions at this point and seriously some of these bosses are insane to imagine avoiding all damage through multiple phases without this crutch, and you'd be totally screwed if you hit their "enrage phase" without any potions left, so either the checkpoints would have to be 30 minutes back in combat or you'd just have to voluntarily suicide any time you use a potion before a checkpoint. But hey, I'm bad.

 

[TedEH]

Started up the System Shock remake this weekend. It's alright. It takes a very inaccessible game and modernizes just enough. It's still pretty brutal though, and retains enough of the original game's design that aged.... not poorly, but not well either. Enemies are frustratingly bullet sponges. You have normal guns, but they seem to do less damage to most enemies than the basic zap gun that you can recharge, despite bullets being the more limited resource. You have inventory management, but it turns into a weird loop of: enter room, pick up everything not bolted down, spend 30 second vaporizing things into scrap, next room, pick up everything, vaporize, next room, gather, vaporize, explore, gather, vaporize.... forever and ever. It beat having no way to clear inventory space, but it's tedious for not much reason. The cyberspace bits are hugely improved though - it plays better, and is visually cleaned up so you can actually tell what you're doing this time.

I didn't get super far yet though, so we'll see if maybe some of that starts to make more sense later.

 

[Albake21]

Started up the System Shock remake this weekend. It's alright. It takes a very inaccessible game and modernizes just enough. It's still pretty brutal though, and retains enough of the original game's design that aged.... not poorly, but not well either. Enemies are frustratingly bullet sponges. You have normal guns, but they seem to do less damage to most enemies than the basic zap gun that you can recharge, despite bullets being the more limited resource. You have inventory management, but it turns into a weird loop of: enter room, pick up everything not bolted down, spend 30 second vaporizing things into scrap, next room, pick up everything, vaporize, next room, gather, vaporize, explore, gather, vaporize.... forever and ever. It beat having no way to clear inventory space, but it's tedious for not much reason. The cyberspace bits are hugely improved though - it plays better, and is visually cleaned up so you can actually tell what you're doing this time.

I didn't get super far yet though, so we'll see if maybe some of that starts to make more sense later.

I'm a little over 10 hours into the game. I think they did an excellent job retaining the original experience but modernizing it, as you said, more accessible. I can see why others might be turned off, but this game went through three iterations, with the second one being scrapped due to straying too far from the original SS1 vision.

The start is a little rough, but you start to learn when to use a specific weapon/ammo on a specific type of enemy. Headshots do make a difference and are worth going for. Using melee as much as possible on the mutants. The electric charge gun can be changed from low, medium, and high. I use it regularly on medium but switch to high for the bigger robots.

Also, I don't pick up everything in every room. Only big ticketed items, especially if I'm close to the recycling bin. That helps immensely. And remember, you're not supposed to be picking fights with every enemy in SS, especially at the start of the game. It would be a nightmare going after every one.

 

[CTID]

after the brief conversation about Thief/Dishonored from the last page or two, I decided to finally try to do a No Powers run on Dishonored 2. Probably comes as no surprise, but holy shit it's a completely different game. I'm not sure whether that means that it's better or not, though. The levels are definitely designed more around having powers like the extended jump and Blink/Far Reach, but there's always a route to take if you have no powers, even if it's much more difficult.

the one thing i found surprisingly disappointing - and it's not really a game-ruining thing - but after coming from Thief 2, a game that is 23 years old, WOW the sound is way worse in Dishonored. it's fine by modern metrics but the sound propagation in Thief 2 is amazing, and because it's a stealth game, sound matters constantly, whether that means you're having to try to find quieter parts of the floor to walk on or just leaning into a door to hear what's on the other side. Dishonored lets you just run around pretty willy nilly, the surfaces you're walking on make no difference. like i said, definitely doesn't ruin the game but it was just kind of shocking to jump between those games and notice that.

still can't wait for Gloomwood. i know that Ubisoft is supposedly working on a remake for the original Splinter Cell, hopefully that potentially means a Chaos Theory remake at some point because that game is still one of the best stealth games ever.

 

[LeviathanKiller]

I've been making my way through Diablo IV lately. It's the first Diablo I've played actually.

Something I noticed that will definitely be on my to-play list is the upcoming PC port of Ratchet and Clank. That series was my favorite back when I played on PS2.

 

[Werecow]

after the brief conversation about Thief/Dishonored from the last page or two, I decided to finally try to do a No Powers run on Dishonored 2. Probably comes as no surprise, but holy shit it's a completely different game. I'm not sure whether that means that it's better or not, though. The levels are definitely designed more around having powers like the extended jump and Blink/Far Reach, but there's always a route to take if you have no powers, even if it's much more difficult.

the one thing i found surprisingly disappointing - and it's not really a game-ruining thing - but after coming from Thief 2, a game that is 23 years old, WOW the sound is way worse in Dishonored. it's fine by modern metrics but the sound propagation in Thief 2 is amazing, and because it's a stealth game, sound matters constantly, whether that means you're having to try to find quieter parts of the floor to walk on or just leaning into a door to hear what's on the other side. Dishonored lets you just run around pretty willy nilly, the surfaces you're walking on make no difference. like i said, definitely doesn't ruin the game but it was just kind of shocking to jump between those games and notice that.

still can't wait for Gloomwood. i know that Ubisoft is supposedly working on a remake for the original Splinter Cell, hopefully that potentially means a Chaos Theory remake at some point because that game is still one of the best stealth games ever.

Thief 2 still to this day has the best sound i've encountered technically, and maybe artistically. I can use sound to track guards walking past a low wall (with no line of sight) with the crosshair, and they appear on the other side of the wall in my crosshair. Pressing the lean button towards a door is an amazing touch (with the sound getting louder like putting your ear to a door).
There are so many amazing details to do with sound in the game. The artistic direction is still top notch as well.

Dishonored 2 is one of my favourite ever games, but yeh the 3d sound properties in the game suck. Sometimes you can even be a floor above or below someone and the audio from them will flick in and out briefly.
Dishonored 2 is great for doing different styles of "runs". Another fun one is called the "batman run" where you initially strike from stealth, but if you get caught, you have to fight, but non-lethally. It brings up all sorts of weird tactics and power choices as well.