>>23101
>Are there really any other games that get that feeling right?
Fallout: New Vegas gave me that feeling the first time through. Max Payne too, to a degree, though there's the obvious noir nihilism overhanging the whole affair. Unreal as well.

I'm sure there are some games made this side of the early 2000s that are competent enough in capturing that feeling but I'm an
unapologetically elitist retro-cunt so any such titles escape me.

>>23101
Dead Space? You're just a lowly engineer turned hobby amputator

>>23101
Not the same genre but I had a similar feeling about Planescape: Torment. An amnesiac wakes up in a mortuary, trying to figure out who the fuck is he, where is he and what's the strange world around him. You are immortal though.
I think I like 2 better. It has some really sinister vibes at certain places. Oh and remember when you acquire the bugbait? A D-Day for Combine, reversed.

>>23104
Also Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, to an extent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7XH-nSMXYM

>>23101
I definitely preferred the first one. The second one was a remarkable achievement in many ways, and raised the bar substantially, but moment to moment I just didn't have as much fun as the original.

>>23102
I replayed Max Payne on a little Android box recently and it was absolutely brilliant. It might help that I can remember playing that game whilst tripping back when I was a teenager, so certain areas of the game still looked like they were luridly coloured and shifting. It's a peculiar thing, trip memories.

Rage sage for /A/ ramblings.

>>23104
Did you play Torment: Tides of Numa Numa, or whatever it was called? I got past the first "disc" and got distracted, never to return.

Metro 2033 was strongly reminiscent of the Half Life vibe I thought. It broke up the tense horror, shooting and exploration segments in a very nicely paced way I thought, nothing out stayed it's welcome. Those bits where you're up on the surface scrabbling about for gas mask filters and not sure if you're even going the right way were some of my best memories in any game of the last decade. Shame the sequels sort of mucked it up.

I've not tried Exodus yet, I pirated it (out of objection to the Epic store exclusivity) then never got around to playing it.

>>23108
I fell out of love with 2033 after trying to beat it on the hardest difficulty, getting to the end bit where you fight the sentient blobs, and simply not having enough ammo left to keep the NPC I was with alive. That's some kind of '90s adventure game trick.

Sage for probably posting about this earlier ITT.

>>23108
I didn't get on very well with Metro 2033 because the whole experience seemed too railroaded - sometimes literally - and the whole bullet economy thing .. seemed weird. Maybe i'm just one of those compulsive hoarder types who never wanted to use the military grade ammunition because 'they're valuable', then having less fun because a lot of the cool looking monsters are difficult to kill with the scrap metal rounds.

>>23109
>>23110

I think a lot of modern games get difficulty entirely wrong. Gamer pride and a thirst for challenge makes you want to play it on the hardest mode, but the fact is they are designed and balanced around "normal mode" and that's how you have the most fun with it.

The recent iD shooters are prime examples of this. I made the mistake of stubbornly playing through Wolfenstein and DOOM 2016 on the hardest modes, and I couldn't escape the feeling that they were just kind of bullshit. The challenge was unfair somehow. But then when I tried it on normal, despite my inner feeling of "but REAL shooters are meant to be played at the hardest setting!", it turns out the gameplay was fundamentally more well balanced. It wasn't just because it was easier, it's because you could actually engage with the mechanics instead of having to cheese it by peeping around corners and shit.

Contrast this with classic Doom. Doom didn't increase the damage you took from enemies on harder difficulties. Doom didn't make enemies arbitrarily harder to kill. What it did do is put in more enemies, and give you less ammo. You might try and argue that's just a roundabout way of doing the same thing, but it really isn't. There's an important difference between having to use half your ammo on one baddie and you'll die in two hits, to having to use half your ammo on four enemies and they will kill you in eight hits, because it stays granular. The balance of the mechanics stays the same, which is what matters.

tl;dr everything new is shit why can't these modern devs get it right fuck

Metro was great though, and I think what you may have missed is missed is that it was more in the spirit of a first person survival horror than an FPS, really. The ending segment was a bit weak, but since we were comparing it to Half Life initially, that's definitely the pot calling the kettle an African American.

I decided to open a new career on KSP after about 5 years and it's surprising how much has changed. They even did another update just the other-day. Reentry is much less forgiving than I remember but you can run things faster without the physics shitting the bed.

I'll probably get to the point where I need to land on Minmus and get bored again.

>>23111
I agree entirely with this. It puts me off once I realise a game is actively cheating (i.e. strategy games) and its gotten worse these days thanks to poor planning.

>>23111
Most of that about Doom isn't true, you know. Enemies on harder difficulties deal double damage, they also increase in speed (which is arguably an arbitrary way to make them harder to kill), and the hardest difficulty has double ammo, not less.

Just pedantry on my part though, I agree with pretty much everything else you wrote. On the "gamer pride", "real men play on hard" thing, I had a friend growing up who insisted on playing games on the hardest difficulty, and then would sit there fuming throughout the whole experience, mostly just fucking up and wasting time replaying areas because he hadn't played it on Normal and didn't have a clue what he was doing.

In most cases with complex modern games, harder difficulty modes are intended for players who've played through the game already. I do not understand the appeal of trying to brute force your way through an experience that is carefully designed to teach you bit by bit, it just seems fucking dumb.

>>23113

>Most of that about Doom isn't true, you know. Enemies on harder difficulties deal double damage, they also increase in speed (which is arguably an arbitrary way to make them harder to kill), and the hardest difficulty has double ammo, not less.

ITYTD had double items and the player takes half damage.

NM had double items, fast monsters, respawning monsters, and cheat codes were disabled.

HNTR, HMP and UV all had "normal" game parameters. Doom never increased the damage the player took on any difficulty.

The middle three represent easy, normal, and hard. The first and last represent mentally challenged baby mode and not even remotely fair mode, respectively- Most players don't consider NM to be a real difficulty choice, it's more of a distinct challenge mode. Indeed, the initial release of Doom as shareware didn't have it, so arguably it was DLC.

I spent an entire summer when I was unemployed making Doom maps. I know my Doom and I am prepared to defend my honour on the internet even at these small hours.

>ITYTD had double items and the player takes half damage.
Another way of putting this is that every mode other than ITYTD deals twice as much damage.

>The middle three represent easy, normal, and hard. The first and last represent mentally challenged baby mode and not even remotely fair mode, respectively
Agree with all this, at least.

Any of your Doom maps still knocking around? I haven't fired up a WAD in a long time, would be a nice excuse.

>>23115
I've spread a few WADs in my time IYKWIM.

>>23112
I can easily lose a whole weekend on KSP. Looking forward to version 2.

>>23107
> Numa Numa
Do I get to play as Dan Balan in it?
Awright, back to the topic. Negative. I never got around to install it, life gets in the way.
Mind you, I had a similar feeling about the P:T initially. It was just too odd and made little sense. Then it clicked; now it's one of my favourite games.

A Plague Tale. Gameplay-wise it's reminiscent of The Last of Us, but it's set in the 14th century with the titular plague being an omnipresent threat. It's a game that leans into the story and atmosphere side of things, but it's peppered with little historical notes and anecdotes that I've found quite interesting. Looks lovely, though I should've got it on PC rather than PS4 as it doesn't have a high framerate option on Pro.

Played two SP expansions to Q2 (Xatrix and Rogue, aka "The Reckoning" and "Ground Zero") and they kind of show their age. Where Q2 (perhaps unfairly) set a standard in my mind, the expansions have not aged as well. Xatrix is fine, more of the same kind of stuff and look what we can do. Particularly egregious are bullet sponge shielded versiosn of otherwise standard enemies. Rogue, however, probably would've been mindblowing at the time but has aged poorly. Adding guns which are useless in SP (and of dubious use in MP) with poor default controls to access them, the turrets and shielded Icarus are just tedious. It does a very good job of keeping you resource constraint to force usage of different weapons, but in a modern context it's sadly more of a chore than a challenge and doesn't quite hit the same balance the base game did.

Disco Elysium and The Outer Worlds are both out and both are getting good reviews from people who aren't industry shills. Can't decide which one to play first.

>>23121

I'm going for The Outer Worlds after hearing that it's on the PC version of Xbox game pass. I definitely didn't want to pay release price for it.

>>23122

My short review on The Outer Worlds.

It's good, it feels like New Vegas in many ways, but hasn't yet grabbed me in the way NV, or any Fallout title has. I can't put my finger on why, but the atmosphere of the whole thing just isn't as compelling as I want it to be. And I absolutely love the Firefly/space frontier type thing, so I'm not sure why I'm not as excited by this as I really should be. Maybe it's just me.

Too much pew-pew, not enough chit-chat, from what I hear.

>>23127

Yeah, that's pretty accurate. The gunplay is fine but not amazing too, though I'm playing on PC on a controller so I suppose I reap what I sow.

It doesn't feel like there needs to be so much loot in the game. Even on hard I don't really need to worry about what armour I have, and I haven't really used consumables other than the basic (stimpak, basically) one.

I'm not super far in but it doesn't seem like too much meat to it. And the theme is quite heavy handed. I get it, corporations are bad. I already knew that, I don't need everyone in the world to remind me quite so unsubtly.

As a game it's nice though. I predict I'll play through the story once and never come back.

I've started playing Urban Dead again. The simple UI and presentation is really pleasing. So far I've spent a 2 days wondering around and searching a police depatment for gear. The wiki is pretty handy for finding active areas within the game, so I'll spend a day or two scanvenging the route as i make my way toward them. Keeping a little in character diary makes it more interesting. Come join me absolutely no-one because it looks dead when you first start.

urbandead.com/ !

>>23136
Blast from the past there. It's no longer updated is it?

>>23137
I haven't bothered to check the updates, yet. Apparently the removed wire cutters because all the fences have holes in them. /shrug

>>23136
Fuck me I remember playing this while watching Deadset on tv.

>>23137
>>23139

>>23137
>>23139

It's kind of fun if you slow down and just take it as it comes. Pictured is my first few days in the game. It helps to have a basic plan, else you're just wandering around. I've found the starting areas to all be barricaded and inacessible without a certain skill/starting class, but the more dangerous areas look to be better from a roleplay persoective. It'll be cool once i grab a radio and start taking a part in the community.

>>23119
Played this on my X1X, incredible game.
But, perhaps only for the one playthrough, as there's no NG+, and the gameplay while fun at times was mostly just to fill the gap between the story.

>>23124
I have similar impressions and I think it's because the writers tried too hard to inject humour into the game. Humour has its place but if you're trying to inject it into every conversation and every facet of the game world, it completely sinks any sense of verisimilitude, which is the cornerstone of pretty much all my favourite RPGs.

On top of that, most of the characters in the game aren't particularly interesting and far too many of the quests are of the MMO "go here, collect this/kill those guys/find that" variety. In a good RPG those kinds of quests would be subverted and would lead to an interesting twist of some kind, but The Outer Worlds plays them straight for the most part.

>>23144

I know exactly what you mean. It's just so heavy handed, I can't take any more lines of dialogue that are just variations on "the corporation treats me badly!" joke over and over. Every sign, ever piece of flavour text, every location is focused solely on either working for a corporation or the absence of working for a corporation. People keep calling this 'the next New Vegas' but it's just not that good. NV, and even FO4 had far, far more nuance than this game. The single track theme just really shrinks the game for me.

Like you I've found the quests lacking, and gameplay wise, my usual charismatic stealthy sniper build is just not fun, because it seems like every single problem in the game so far I've been able to solve with intimidate or persuade dialog options, to the point that I've ended up actively avoiding charisma check dialog because I know it'll just end the fucking quest early; And for the combat, though you can crouch and hide sort of and chuck loads of points into stealth, you can't really use it. Once you've shot someone you're exposed to everyone in the area.

And the quests are mostly entirely predicable. It took me about four seconds to work out that one bloke had been eaten by cannibals, and knew before I'd even bothered looking around their house that I'd find that out and have to fight them. Plenty of other quests that are a 'mystery' just end so quickly and unsatisfyingly because, like you say, the game plays all these tropes so straight. I haven't once been surprised by the game, which is a bit sad for what is supposed to be a rich RPG.

I've read/watched a few reviews on the game at this point and everyone seems to love it, people have said Bethesda have no business making another open world game because Obsidian are so much better at it, and I can't disagree that the game, as a game is very playable, it's big, it works, it's not bad, but fuck, it's not really good, either. I just can't find any of the substance in it that these rave reviews seem to see in abundance.

I haven't been this vocal about a game in a long time, mostly because I feel like I must be missing something, as mostly everyone else is overwhelmingly gushing about the experience.

>>23145

I think there's two camps of people. You either loved F:NV unconditionally, pointing out the superior depth of writing and variety in completing quests; or you're one of the people who might have loved F:NV, but thought it felt more like the work of an ambitious mod team than professional devs.

I'm in the second camp so I'm holding off on Outer Worlds until it goes on some sort of sale. Space corporatism doesn't feel like escapism for me either, considering how much of my time in real life I spend banging on at people to try avert that future, and it's a very definite dead horse trope by this point.

There's also the fact that people have all of a sudden decided Bethesda are the worst company in human history. I'm not sure exactly why, I suspect it's a bunch of ex-fanboys who bought Fallout 76 without waiting to see if it was the obvious horse shit sensible people could see it was obviously going to be ever since they even mentioned the word "online", and now feel scorned by their first let down. I think the rest of Bethesda's track record has been just fine. EA routinely murders orphans and people are still buying their games, it's weird that Bethesda have ended up with such hatred from their first major failure.

I've had a play on Mortal Kombat X. It's the first fighting game I've played since Tekken 3. Either they're not as good as I remember or the Mortal Kombat franchise isn't very fun.

>>23147
I find with fighters you're either really really into them or not in the slightest. Never been my thing personally.

>>23146
Even 76 isn't THAT bad. Especially given the updates over time that have added a bit more flavour to the game.

That said, the subscription service they announced recently has put a damper on things.

>>23150
Audiable mirth.

>>23150
I got myself a fancy backlit keyboard a few days ago. The backlighting is actually really useful for shitposting in the dark learning to code in the dark because I can finally see all those obscure characters I've never needed to use before now without turning on the lights and ruining the ambiance.

I'm not sure what's happening here, but I don't like it.

>>23153
I thought the Halo series, unlike COD, was generally considered to be good despite its mainstream appeal.

>>23154
I wasn't talking about the games, I was talking the weird pricing. I checked again just now though all the £30 DLC has been removed so I think it was just an error.

I reinstalled Battlefield 4 last night, because BFV is still shit and I've spent more time in BF1 than most soldiers on the western front did in the real war.

Dice are definitely the next developer EA will sacrifice to appease the Great Old Ones. It's remarkable how badly BFV holds up compared to its direct predecessors. The rot of corporate interference and shareholder greed have well and truly taken hold now.

>>23156
Battlefield 4 is a masterpiece - I also have BF1 and BF5 but regularly go back to 4 when I just want to play and have fun.

https://twitter.com/valvesoftware/status/1196566870360387584?fbclid=IwAR08DQpQFS6sQhmX8EguFjxGp4WVyTlHZMjrJ5nVHemuh9nVvU3qecBttHY

Valve just announced a new Half Life VR game.

>>23158
So they still can't count to 3?

Finished Disco Elysium recently. I started playing it during a period of heavy drinking and initially enjoyed the character's mental state reflecting my own, but I started feeling shitty about everyone in the game calling me a degenerate alcoholic and decided to have my character tidy himself up a bit and take the case more seriously, which coincided with me taking a break from the Al-Gul in real life.

It's simultaneously one of the funniest and most poignant games I've ever played.

>>23160
Looks pretty cool, you've got me convinced. Also bought 'Out There' and 'Signa Theory' in a studio pack, that latter of which looks awesome.

Heh, I'm Playing Il-2 Sturmovik and my CO is called Major Bjelland.

>>23176
Huh, apparently it's a feature supposed to reflect the cahracters political alignment. That's interesting. I suppose my offence was because i was playing as myself rather than the character? Whatever. I'd delete my previous post but passwords don't match :|