Okay I’m going to rant on this now. The big game developers have completely fucked up the current generation of big name releases. I’ve been playing for decades and have played almost all the well known franchises, but I’ve never seen it this bad. Let’s look at 3 of the popular games from the last few months, each worse than the last. Red Dead Redemption 2 - I own and have played this. Beautiful looking game and decent story, but you have to wade through a bunch of mind numbing tasks that make this game more like work than play. Brush the horse, kill the deer, skin the deer, contribute to the camp, get more money - fuck, I spend all day running from project to project to task to deadline in real life, why the fuck do I want to do this in my spare time? Fallout 76 - don’t have it and won’t buy it. I’ve followed the near disastrous launch of this game, but even so I was going to wade in until talking to my nephew (22) who brought me up to date on how the game platform is easily hacked, and folks are having personal info stolen and accounts hijacked. Black Ops 4 - currently trying to play it and it’s a fucking joke. Blackout is simply a full on rip-off of Fortnite. I don’t even get how Epic isn’t suing the fuck out of Activision. Are they related somehow? And the zombies mode - Jesus this has been done to death. But I haven’t actually played it or multiplayer because IT WONT FULLY DOWNLOAD. It shows up in my account as fully downloaded but when I try to play it it is locked and reads 54% downloaded. A quick google search informs me that A) this is common and B) this is difficult to fix. What the fuck is going on out there? Why do all of these games suck so bad. I’m easily irritated on a good day- shit like this that screws up time when I should be having fun or relaxing makes me want to put my fist through the fucking wall.
It’s been happening for a while now. Non-gamers are running game companies and game teams. Microtransactions and “they made millions doing it so we should too” has permeated the industry. They are getting more and more out of touch with their customers. Just look at the recent fuckup with Diablo for a prime example.
Don't you all have phones? No fucking clue it was just so bad then they tried to get all the videos of that deleted.
I’m more than happy to blame the MMO crowd. Years ago they signaled a willingness to not only pay for the game, but then pay extra for upgrading weapons and armor, etc. (facepaint for fucks sake - what kind of loser shells out extra money for avatar face paint?!), and ultimately subscriptions for on line acccess in an annual basis to allow you to play the game you already purchased. It’s the gamer equivalent of the NFL trend of seat licensing- give us 10, 20, 30,000 a seat and we’ll allow you to buy tickets for those seat. Jesus Christ people are fucking stupid.
And yet some hardcore zealots will still defend D3 to death. I don’t get it. Shutting down Blizzard North should have put the Diablo franchise in the ground too. But hey, we’re getting a fancy schmancy mobile game.
Ha. Looks like Fox is on the same "don't you have phones?" kick as well with their latest Alien game: First comment says it all: Gearbox Software: "I made Alien Colonial Marines, the worst Alien Game in the franchise" D3 Go!: " Hold my beer"
I'm surprised none of you put this up but here's Obsidian taking a giant swipe at Bethesda (and potentially scoring a home run, as this game looks brilliant, albeit judging on the trailer):
Get God of War. It doesn't have any of the dumb shit you mentioned and the combat is fun in a way that doesn't get tiresome. It also manages to avoid the 'you just completed something, now go fuck around with your inventory for 20 minutes' scenario that a lot of games are running into now. I can see why it won game of the year. The only complaint I have about it so far (I think I'm about 30% through) is that it might be a bit too easy. I really liked the new Assassin's Creed as well, but there's some caveats. The main one is that the difficulty is perfect... that is until you hit level 30 or so when your abilities just become too good. I put it on the hardest difficulty, but it just doesn't matter. You have moves like heroic strike, which are completely unblockable and do a shitload of damage to everything. Still, it's a lot of fun. The map is the most massive I've ever seen in a game and despite the complaints I never found it sparse. After the first half or so of the game I did start skipping the really dull side missions though. They could have made it a little smaller and just not put in those "Go grab this flower for me." missions that are totally pointless. I don't know if I'm going to get the expansion as again, it's just not that fun when your abilities are so overpowered. Still, there's a lot to the game that makes it fun, and I personally loved the ship battles. I was going to get Fallout76 and Blackops, but fortunately I have friends that grabbed those on release and everyone said Fallout76 was trash, and while Blackops doesn't seem quite that hated no one seemed very impressed with it.
Masochism must be my thing since I started with Black Ops 4 and got into it a bit. They did away with the wall sliding correcting the other "advanced warfare" nonsense in the previous game but this is a franchise in long decline. This game more than ever the whole prestige leveling really stick out giving higher level players that have ground out weapons upgrades that far outclass lower levels. They don't balance games at all and you are either getting raped by 60 percent or vice versa. The spawn system has gone backwards and you'd think this was the company's first foray into online first person shooters. I picked up Ace Combat 7 since Im on a video game kick. I havent played one since the early PS2 days when I rented one for a while. This is supposed to be a more arcade air combat game. Boy it's a steep learning curve for dog fighting. Again another game that has you grind out upgrades. Maybe it's because this is the first game Ive played in a while but the plot in a completely alternate reality earth with different countries and continents makes it almost incomprehensible, you can really feel the Japanese development of this game.
I've finally got around to playing to Dark Souls 3. I haven't played either of the previous two games. I've gone back and forth on whether or not I really like this game, and I think I do, but I'm not sure I quite buy into the hype. First of all, every time I see this game mentioned people are talking about how it's one of the hardest games out there. Is it really though? I mean, this game would be hard if it wasn't for 3 major things that kind of negate that. 1. The amount of opportunities you have to abuse the ever loving shit out of the bow is ridiculous. Seriously, every time I encounter a 'tough' enemy there is some spot where you can just shoot them and they can't hit you. They don't even try to do something about this. They just stand there flailing around helplessly waiting to die. I've fought something like 5 dragons, and these were supposed to be tough fights, but those fuckers don't even move while you just sit on your ass and shoot them. 2. A few of the bosses in this game would be pretty hard. At least I think they would be, except the game lets you summon an NPC ally for every boss fight. Some of the NPCs I've summoned are so good they can kill the boss on their own. At a boss' best you can just beat the shit out of it while it has its back turned to you. Sometimes you can summon 2 or 3 NPCs for a boss fight, and at that point it's just silly. I've fought a few of the bosses solo, and they weren't that hard once you have their attack patterns down. At least those are actual fights though. With the NPCs every boss is a breeze. They should have limited it to one NPC (or zero) per boss fight and at least made it so they can't heal themselves. 3. The AI in this game is really dumb. For example, during the road of sacrifices area you come upon 15 or so enemies all huddled together. This might have been a tough encounter, except they just fucking stand there while you walk around and head shot all of them. I don't expect AI to be able to react like a human player, but the 3 dudes next to you just got shot in the face and... nothing? Come on. I think developers can do a little better than that. In addition there are a lot of locations where an enemy will just refuse to come through a doorway or something like that for no reason. So you can just stand at the edge of the doorway and either shoot them, or swing at them after they swing. As far as dying goes, most of the time this game kills you it isn't because it's punishing you for mistake. To me, that's what difficulty is supposed to be about. Instead, it's just the game fucking you over in some really stupid way. One of the buttons suddenly won't work (and no, I'm not talking about an enemy staggering you). Your character won't roll, or won't sprint, or won't switch from the bow to his sword, or you'll hit attack and he'll take 2 seconds to acknowledge it. That's not difficulty. That's just random fuckery. There have been so many times too where an enemy can suddenly just hit me through 3 feet of stone for no discernible reason. I mean melee enemies, not some spell casting that would maybe make a little sense. As far as other aspects of the game, I really wish developers would stop doing this shit where your character is inexplicably blocked by a 2 inch high barrier. For fuck's sake, just put a goddamn fence there. That stuff really takes me out of the game, and this game does that nonstop. When it comes to stories in games I'm one of those players who really appreciates some effort being put into the narrative. It doesn't have to be anything super impressive, but I like it to be there. Of course, a game can be great without any story at all, but it's still nice to have. Dark Souls 3 barely has anything in this regard. I usually find myself chatting with characters between missions, but not so in this game. The dialogue very rarely changes anyway, and what little story the game does have seems like pure nonsense. It reminds me of Destiny in the sense that it's like someone came up with a concept they thought was really cool, and then immediately hit a brick wall, so instead of an ongoing narrative you end up with more and more vague bullshit to try to cover up the fact that there wasn't really any plan as to how everything is supposed to work. That said, the world setting is well done and the combat can be pretty fun at times. I think what I liked best about this game is the way it does the leveling. It's very incremental, and you can't really run into a situation where you do a few side missions, or farm an area for awhile, and then when you go back to the main story you suddenly find that all the enemies are now way too weak for your character. Leveling might help a little, but it's not a game changer, and I hope more games copy that model. I also liked that the equipment lay out was fairly simple and isn't cluttered with endless customization. I can really enjoy that in a game like Monster Hunter World, but you can get really sick of constantly having to update your character. Overall, I'd give Dark Souls 3 a 7/10. I don't regret buying it, but I'm not in love with it and I'm not rushing out to get the previous 2 games.
Anybody else playing Apex Legends? I'm sure most people have heard of it, but it's a free battle royale that came out a couple weeks ago, from the same company who did titanfall. There are still some occasional lag and disconnect issues, but it is really well put together for a game that just came out. The balancing is surprisingly good. All the unqiue character abilities are helpful, but won't come anywhere near winning battles outright by themselves, which is good. The weapon selection is great. Every place that has 'best gun rankings' puts the order differently. The only semi-useless guns are one shitty pistol and a sniper. Sniping doesn't really work in this game, with the exception of a legendary you usually only see when 3-4 teams are left. The only balancing issue I don't get is Bangalore's ultimate, as it is basically the same as Gibraltor's except way shittier. Even so, the other abilities more or less balance it out. I really hope they don't ruin it like fortnite. People are already demanding new weapons and characters. I mean for fuck's sake, it's been out like two weeks. They did a really good job with the character and weapon mix they launched with so rushing new crap out would be a really bad idea. Unfortunately, that's what the new generation of gamers insists on to keep playing something. I mean, I want additions to the game(especially more maps). I just don't want an unending plethora of crap pulped out just because. Anyway, it's a lot of fun for now. Definitely check it out if you like shooters and battle royales. Besides, it's free so if you end up not liking it you don't have to invest anything anyway.
I’ve heard nothing but great things about it and am being presured to play it soon. Just haven’t made the time yet.
Yep, Its a lot of fun. The disconnect issues are really annoying, though. Ill be in game and then it just suddenly crashes back to the desktop. Its happened pretty frequently. The map is cool but not too big that it becomes a chore to traverse. The weapons are ok, but are clearly ripped from other games. I do like that I dont have to spend extra time mixing and matching attachments and gear scavenging like in PUBG. The Battle Royale field is starting to get crowded, and who knows how they will handle the insane growth this game has. But so far, for a free game, its a ton of fun.
For something that was just released it is pretty dam good. Thou i was crashing like a mother fucker last night. The pistols are useless except the wingman. You can't snipe that well in this game, except the yellow one. The light sniper rifle the G7 is not bad because it has a really fast rate of fire. I dont really like most of the light weapons, to little damage with to small of a clip even with the add on. I am having good luck with the heavies on single fire.
If any guns do get nerfed I'm guessing it will be the wingman and/or the spitfire. The spitfire hits harder than all the assault rifles and has hardly any recoil. The wingman snipes better than the longbow, which is just kind of funny. It works well in every situation/range and saves a lot of backpack space since you don't need to carry much ammo for it. Yeah, outside of the scout I don't use light weapons a whole lot either. People love the 301, but it's damage output feels too low to me. Everyone else says it's the best gun or one of the best, but I hate the peacekeeper. I can't hit shit with that thing. Probably me being crazy, but I swear I've had people right in the middle of the sights from ten feet away and it just whiffs.
I have to say that I'm pretty impressed with how quickly and well they've scaled up. They went to what... 25 million users by end of the first week? Technically, that is phenomenal, even if there are some disconnect issues going on. When you stop and see just how many "big" games outright died upon launch with nowhere near that level of users, it kind of speaks to the complexity involved. It's not been perfect for them, but hats off nonetheless.
Yeah, I've been really impressed with the launch as well. The disconnects happen, but they are fairly infrequent. Usually new shooters are full of bugs and have a couple weapons that are broken as hell. It's hard to balance things out before a meta takes form. This is maybe the best I've seen, at least for a shooter this new. Sure, the game didn't release with zero issues, but it's about as minimal as one could ask for, especially considering the insane traffic this game got right out of the gate. The really impressive part is they did all of this with no beta launch whatsoever.