the be all end all video game thread

I'm playing Kindgons of Amalur, parts of it for the second time since my PS3 died when I was 20 hours in. I'm replaying through the early parts and I don't know why more people didn't love this game more. The action is pretty fun, even though the quests are typical, each of them have great story telling that happen through the quests. So yes they are kill and fetch, but the storytelling that goes along with it is always fun. The mini-games are fun, the item crafting is fun, the exploring is great, the combat is pretty damn varied. Not to mention there is so much goddamn game.

Like its rare that you get this many hours out of $60 (now its cheaper) of singleplayer these days. I'm pretty bummed that the company went out of business and it is viewed as a failure even though it should have been a huge franchise. I'm having more fun playing this game than I am trying to get through Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. IGN gave it a 9. Metacritic gave it an 81. I'm thinking the timing of its release was bad or something, because it should just get more love and should have sold way more.

/end rant

 

It annoys the fuck out of me that more and more games are going the path that even in single player you have to be connected.

Of course, it's irritated me for years that idiots would basically pay a company money to act as a tester when you buy a buggy POS' immediately upon release and sit around reporting bugs and glitches. This SimCity debacle is only the latest example. For about the last 7 years I've never bought a game within a couple of weeks or so after release (except for SC II and I think Xenoblade Chronicles). It's a stance that has served me extremely well.

 

Its really a god damned shame, because I would love to play a new Sim City, but after reading the nightmares that people are going through, it is clearly not a game worth any time or effort to play. Instead, I'll focus on diving back into Skyrim.

 

The new SimCity is actually fun, I picked it up launch night. It's just been impossible to play it until today.

 

I'd actually agree with this, as I completed this game, with a few minor problems I saw. First, while there are a TON of quests, they're not varied at all. Also, with the level cap, I had a maxed out character well before reaching the end of the game. Also, while a lot of people loved that you could talk to a guy and pay some money to completely re-distribute skill points and change your character, I found it kind of silly. It made the choices you make on skills that much less important, because you can always redistribute. Make it to the end as a two-handed rogue and are struggling? No problem, go pay some money and become a mage.

All that said, I easily sank 70 hours into this game, and could've done a LOT more if I had done more of the side quests. This was easily a 100 to 120 hour game.

I think the reason it ultimately ended up failing is that it was trying to live up and emulate the Elder Scrolls games, and that particulr task is virtually impossible. It also came out just a few months AFTER Skyrim, so the vast vast majority of the people targeted by this game were still way into Skyrim and didn't have time for another time-sink open world game. I honestly think had they released it just 6 months later, it would've gotten a lot more buys from people suffering Skyrim burnout who wanted something new.

 

Good review on Sim City

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chris-kluwes-simcity-5-review-2013-3" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.businessinsider.com/chris-kl ... iew-2013-3</a>

 

Heart of the Swarm launched just in time for me to hit Platinum as Protoss in Wings of Liberty.

So far the first couple of missions of the campaign have been simple and poorly written but I'm loving them anyway.

 

Agreed, on both it's level of fun and it's playability on the server being damn near impossible. Really enjoyed the little time I've had with it. Really anxious to see how the global market will affect cities as well as the inter-region connectivity. If anyone wants an invite to a private region, my Origin ID is Voorhees911 and I typically play on server Oceanic 1.

 

The writing is awful. I just picked it up today too. At the moment I'm a lot more curious about how the new units are going to affect the ladder. Hellbats look like they need a nerf. PVP looks promising, it really needs to slide out of the coin flippish match up it is right now where there are only a handful of viable builds that hard counter each other (and late game, if it ever gets there is just a collosus spam fest). I'm really interested to see what happens with pvz as well. It had kind of stagnated to the point where protoss had to put up really heavy two base aggression to prevent the zerg from over expanding and taking the map, and the initial push was a little too hard for zerg to hold. Overall the game seemed pretty balanced at the end of WoL, but needed some tweaking to make it more fun.

I've only done a few of the campaign missions so far. I couldn't give less of a fuck about the story line they're developing, but the missions seem on par with it's predecessor.

 

Nerfbats can suck my ass quite frankly. Hellion run bys were bad enough to stop as zerg before the queen range buff, now it's all transformer LOL time. Also, the mothership core makes it impossible for Protoss to take a badly positioned fight. Remember when recall was on arbiters, or the mothership? This is stupid. Also was the speed upgrade medivacs got really necessary? I'm still of the opinion they need to bring the medic back. Why is your transport also your healer? Ridiculous. And yes, I realize I'm sounding a bit Idra-esque, and I'm sure glad defilers...oops, I mean vipers were put in. But fer fucks sakes. I'm not going to talk about widow mines because I don't want to have an aneurysm.

 

Widow mines are fine; though I love the community disparity raging about them while non-ironically wanting the Lurker back.
I expect Hellbat damage output or spread to be reduced but I don't think they're as bad as any protoss complaining thinks. They thrash enough of the zerg army I understand at least some anger there.

I love Idra's MCore comment "you can be stupid once for free" - it's totally true. That said, I'm glad that it's given PvP the ability to actually expand without just losing to LOL4GATE or LOL IMMORTAL

Skytoss is the sexiest thing on earth and has singlehandedly made PvZ fun instead of frustrating again for me.

 

Holy shit I forgot how stupidly overpowered my Skyrim character was. I killed the last dragon boss with two arrows. Just downloaded some DLC and I've dove back into the world; it is a ton of fun. My journal screen was cluttered with about 15 unfinished quests (not to mention all the miscellaneous goals I haven't yet accomplished), some of which I am unable to finish. I am also massacring everything in one hit, making the challenge almost non existent.

That said, the DLC is fun as hell so far, and I remember why I loved the world of Skyrim. Its such an addicting game.

 

Just finished Far Cry 3, overall 8/10. -2 for onscreen button tapping nonsense.

Aside from that, it was a beautiful game.



Anyone have the new Tomb Raider?

 

Yep, I've been playing simcity quite a bit since the server stuff cooled down, but that just means that I and everyone else are starting to notice how buggy and broken the actual game is.

One of the big selling points was that they simulate every sim in your city, so you can watch as they go throughout their whole day. Well first off, they pad the population number so there aren't actually as many sims in your city as you think. Second, which is one of the biggest bugs I've see, when a sim leaves work for the day they go to the nearest house that isn't full on the shortest path possible. This means that even if you have a big 6 lane avenue nearby, if a low density street is the shortest route, they'll take it...Along with the other ~300 sims that just left the same workplace. So you've got a ton of cars all heading for the same house (remember they all try to go to the nearest open house) on a street that has low capacity. WTF.

Also it seems there is a bug so that only about 10-15% of the population are workers, which means that cities (which are already small and cramped) need to be upwards of 80-90% residential buildings.

It's pretty fucked up, I don't think I'll end up playing it much longer, and I was expecting to be hooked on this game for a couple months.

 

Yeah, the IGN review said the game is a little more raw combat wise, but this is before he became the God of War. It starts off less epic understandably, but then it ramps up and gets good. I played the demo and I get what he was getting at. They aschewed the additional weapons, but then decided to have a system where you update different God enchantments on the blades. So they will always be the same chains, but different twists on the combos (also different orb rewards depending on what God you're channelling). They tossed in old acarde style one off uses of enemy weapons to toss in combat variation.

I'm dying to see how they tie it to the beginning of God of War I, because at the beginning of that game, he didn't seem to have ascended to shit. That's what I'm more concerned about.

 

Yeah the other thing was the game felt harder overall (in some places too hard due to the amount of enemies not the AI of enemies) because you didn't have that magic crutch. What had to happen is the guy had to learn more of the combos outside the rock-paper-scissors approach vs certain enemies with the previousg games. I actually like that. I don't know why people expect him to be more powerful in a prequel.

 

God of War or Tomb Raider?


I love both franchises but Tomb Raider seems to be getting better reviews as something new while God of War is ranking less than its predecessor.