>>25191

It was just things like how he spends ages going on about how RPGs should abstract player skill to character skill, and then in his suggestions for improving the combat he's talking about Dark Souls (which in fairness is why I think ESO is so respectable even for an MMO, the combat leans heavily on that reaction based dodging/blocking kind of style- Or at least it did for the kinds of characters I played. You can make it boring by being a disgustingly OP sorcerer, but I hardly think that should be seen as the game's fault).

Things like that added up to seem as if he was contradicting himself a lot, but in fairness I was only half listening to most of it, and got the impression it was nothing but twelve hours of whining with not a lot to offer. He can make as many disclaimers as he wants, that's still what it came out as, and he would have been much better editing it down. Other youtubers have simply done the same thing better IMO. Very much a case of quantity over quality.

Anyway it put me right in the mood to play some Oblivion. I don't know where to start with this lot.

>>25189
I, too, have been recommended the twelve hour Oblivion "analysis". I hold it in contempt not because I've watched any of it and disagreed, but from a purely video making standpoint, I consider it a failure if to explain ones feelings on a game you need the amount of time I could take to play said game and write a short essay about it myself. I blame that Hbomber berk and his Sherlock review, or the Fallout one, whichever was first, I didn't watch either.

However, I understand what you mean about whinging pedants and their rose tinted glasses. Just this past weekend I scrubbed through some Scottish bloke's video talking about all the things wrong with new Total War games: "new" being post-Shogun 2 I think. You'd believe a pool of sick was all that appeared in your PC when you downloaded any Total War game of the previous ten years, whereas anything before that was the purest ambrosia. I stopped listening altogether when he began comparing the series unfavourably with Paradox Interactive's output.

>>25193

>that Hbomber berk

I really can't put my finger on what I dislike about this guy but the word berk is pretty appropriate.

I generally agree with his opinions and his videos are actually quite decent, but he just comes across like such a typical student twat, despite the fact he must be well into his 30s.

>>25194
He just turned 29. I can appreciate what is unlikable about him, but unlike you both I don't dislike him per se.

Following on from another lad who posted in the wrong thread...

>>25201
>The environment is picturesque, the music is soothing, the fundamental gaemplay loop is satisfying.

I think you've really nailed it, there. Oblivion was my introduction to the Elder Scrolls series, and while I've come to play games like Morrowind more from preference, I still really love Oblivion despite its flaws.

The setting is key. People rightly criticise the generic nature of the fantasy world it presents, and while I agree it is a step back in terms of originality, it's hard to be annoyed with it when many parts of it are rendered so beautifully. The music and countryside are just gorgeous, the towns feel cosy, the game has a warmth that totally pulled me in even as someone that doesn't typically enjoy fantasy settings. It felt like a distilled and heightened version of fantasy tropes, rather than a lazy copy.

I even kind of appreciated the ugliness of the characters and the weird, buggy quirks. The way a beggar's voice changes mid-conversation if you give them a coin. The ragdoll physics that allow you to blow apart a room of items with a single spell. The sheer, staggering stupidity of the AI. There's a kind of loveable shambolicness to the game.

>>25215

It's a lot like Symphony of the Night in that regard.

A lot of the game is outright broken, the difficulty/balancing of levelling and gear is just flat out missing past a certain point (although it's the opposite issue to Oblivion here) and it's full of bugs that can be use to break the game in half.

But despite that it's probably one of the best pieces of evidence that sometimes, putting style before substance is okay. Sort of like a Yank muscle car. Who cares if it was apparently engineered by a caveman with down's syndrome under the bonnet, when it looks and sounds so good that you enjoy every minute you spend inside it regardless?

I've acquired a PSP off eBay, apparently they are great for playing emulated GBA and PS1 games.

Any recommendations?

>>25217
>I've acquired a PSP off eBay, apparently they are great for playing emulated GBA and PS1 games.
This seems terribly roundabout.

>>25218
The direct solution being to buy the consoles?

>>25217
I loved the PSP - particularly WipeOut Pure.

>>25218

I had a PSP ages ago for precisely that purpose. I imagine there are probably better solutions these days, but it was a fantastic little machine for retro gaming. With the right custom firmware you could have basically the entire history of gaming up to the PS1 era in your coat pocket. I whiled away many a long train journey playing Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger.

>>25217
Not sure about GBA or PS1 games, but here are a few recommendations from when I used to fuck about with a flashed PSP back when they came out:

Everybody's Golf for a casual fuckabout game - completely addictive.
PoPoLoCrois was a really enjoyable JRPG that was visually stunning. It didn't push the boundaries of what the PSP could do graphically, but I'd probably say that it complemented the device better than any of the other games I bothered with (which was a lot, because I was getting them free online).
Wipeout Pure, per >>25220, is a great game.
Valhalla Knights was one that I enjoyed, it had a nostalgic JRPG feel which in hindsight was just because it's a copy-paste of any other JRPG at the time. It was still fun, though it about broke my PSP with how graphically intensive it was for the poor thing. It was apparently well-liked enough to get a sequel.
Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions is a PSP re-issue of the original FFT game for the PS1. [spoiler]Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is the best game ever made, so emulate that.[/i]

Just looking at the list on Wikipedia, if you're into Japanese games then there's a wealth to choose from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_Portable_games

On emulating GBA games, check out the Megaman Battle Network series of games, they would probably work quite well on a PSP.

>>25222
Cheers for that, I've downloaded a ton of games including this one I enjoyed as a kid.

This thing really is pretty cool, the screen is WAY better quality than I expected. Its far brighter and crisper than anticipated, and the form factor is very comfortable.

>>25223
I suppose that's what I get for trying to use this website on this newfangled device called a phone.

>>25223
The screen is really the cherry on top of the PSP. That's why I had said PoPoLoCrois was the best complement for the device, its graphics are just high-end pixel art that play towards the size and density of the screen, where a lot of other games at the time were pushing too hard with 3D that the hardware couldn't handle.

Honourable mention for the screen (and browser) being a great way for 17-year-old me to watch porn.

What's the battery life on a PSP these days?

I was eyeing up the current crop of portable gaming pc type things, but they're a lot of money for what I know would almost certainly end up as me just playing an hour or so of Crash Bandicoot on a quiet night shift.

>>25226
About 5 hours or so, but you can also buy modded power banks which give a lot more. A cheapy chinese one on amazon has users reporting 7 ish hours. Which is honestly about the same as a Switch if not better.

Lost Judgment, the sequel to Judgment, itself a spin off of Yakuza. A lot of side stuff to do, some of it well thought out like drone racing and boxing, some of it less so like robotics (makes a Robot Wars style minigame incredibly boring) and dance club (you have to perform each song four times to progress the story). I've played about 18 hours, and am still only on chapter 4 of 13. So far most of it has taken place in Yokohama, where Yakuza Like A Dragon was set, which is a much less interesting and more spread out place to explore compared to Kamurocho.

I've been playing a bit of Tomb Rumble, a weird f2p multiplayer platformer thing, that involves trying to kill each other with traps. Sort of interesting. I was just grinding to get the achievements, but finding it mildly enjoyable now.

Lemnis Gate is free on Game Pass, it's a 4D hero shooter. Each person takes it in turns to play for 25 seconds at a time. These turns will persist in the next turn. So if P1 destroys an objective in 20 seconds, P2 could come in and destroy P1 before the objective is destroyed. Then P1 could counter by destroying P2 before he has a chance to kill P1's first character so on and so forth. A very unique concept, but of the 10 or so heroes available, very few are fun to play, and the controls don't feel very good.

>>25230
Sounds great to play for 2 hours and never touch again. I had a similar experience with Spligate.

All of my Steam friends are playing New World, but it just looks sort of... shit. Any MMOlads given it a try?

Cyber Hook
It's a certain kind of speed game. If you already know that re-trying a map to go faster is not for you, then this is probably not your game, but if you're on the fence Cyber Hook is a good intro game to FPS going fast.

It falls into the same niche as Deadcore or Cloud Built where you can muddle through a level, at least ealy on, but it's built on understanding how movement works. The further you go on, the less you can muddle through and the more you need to learn how the movement system works. Cyber Hook is a pretty good introduction to that genre, it's quite forgiving (in terms of getting through the end) and quite gentle in terms of encouraging the player to go faster.

It embeds leaderboards in some of the status screens, but they can be easily ignored. If you ever wanted to try your hand at FPS speed, this is the perfect entry game.

>>25233
Ta, might take a look. I've played a few of that sort over the years. Other similarish ones (no hooks iirc) to check out are Inertia, Exertus, FrostRunner, 404Sight, Refunct (Very short, one level, but very pleasant). There was a few longer games with hooks that enjoyed, not necessarily speedrun focused, but their names escape me. Valley was perhaps one, but I'd need to replay it.

>>25232
I played 82 minutes of it and refunded. It had an incredibly tedious start. Kill 5 skeletons. Collect 20 stone. Gather 60 wood. Acquire 15 animal skins. Combat doesn't work very well on a keyboard, and I don't think there's native controller support. I liked that instead of classes you level up weapon types by using them, but that's pretty much the full extent of what I enjoyed.

>>25234
Thanks for the recommendations! I replay Valley every few months because it really captures the pure joy of going fast, but Refunct is equally darling for different reasons. I'll have to give the others a shot, no hook needed. I defrag casually, so it's more about how it works than a particular mechanic.

I miss Tribes: Ascend.

I've been playing a bit more Doom and I'm getting into after all. I think it's just a game I can't play for much than an hour at a time, but that's okay. Not every game has to be a Football Manager or Skyrim level time sink. I do wish enemies stood out a bit more, between my cheap monitor and my bad eyes everything blurs together. And even though I thought I hated secret hunting the map in this game actually makes it alright. I think Wolfenstein 3D's "secrets" that were, as far as I could tell, press every wall texture until one is actually a door put me off a long time ago and I assumed it was a stuped idea ever since.

>>25237
Same, I never played the original Tribes games and that was my first experience. I remember the rock jumps and weird physics exploits, it was fucking fun. I think there was a copycat game called Freesomething but I couldn't get into it. Blue plates were too fun. Brute discos. Damn.

I've been looking at my Steam library for two hours, I have zero desire to play computer games despite continuing to tell myself that this is how I like to relax.

>>25239
I never played Tribes either, but the (apparently simplified) skiing mechanic was super fun in Ascend. I think that was part of why it didn't get main stream success, however. As a purely PvP game, it was hard to learn. To be competitive you had to learn the classes but more importantly you had to learn the skiing routes. Even if you read a wiki, you had to practice them and the only way to do so was to play the game, where everyone and their dog would try to stop you.

This follows the community driven approach being usurped by the company driven one. Quake (in all its iterations with all its mods) was usually hosted by some kind soul, CS was a LAN game again hosted by some person with a decent PC. Gloom, ActionQuake, UrbanTerror, even TeamFortress were self hosted by people who could and maybe funded by a group of people. Blizzard was always a bit strange, but Bnet was a thing until they started guzzling money.

The point is that if you cannot run community servers, a game is worthless if you enjoy games for the game's sake because no company is going to run your game for you if there's no money in it. And if it needs the company to run it, you've already lost. They've taken control of the game board and are charging you to have access to it.

>>25241
IIRC Hi Rez kept changing things that people liked, and then stopped changing anything at all, to focus on Smite, letting the game die. I started playing at the tail end of the open beta so I was probably ahead of the curve in terms of getting to grips with the mechanics - personally I never really noticed people trying to 'stop' me learning routes or skiing, you could just pick Pathfinder and imapct nades and fuck around at 200kph for most of the game if you wanted to, provided you didn't play objective. You could also simply load the map on its own if you wanted I think?

I just remember every patch release was another fun killer. Patching out rock bounces, patching out quickswapping, patching out classes...bleh.

I'm now reminded of C&C Renegade, and how I will never, ever play it again. The remake is...good but it's not the same, doesn't play the same, doesn't feel or look the same.

Good point on community servers. Shame it's worked out like that.

PLayed the Battlefield 2042 beta. It's only crashed my PC to a forced restart twice, but hey ho, it's the beta isn't it.

It feels a lot more like Battlefield should than the last one, from a basic gameplay perspective, but then again there wasn't much really wrong with the last one in that regard. It was more that it was just completely and blatantly unfinished, because they evidently had to delete half of it for being too much like Fortnite after the backlash that trailer caused.

The shitty "supply" system is gone, but they have kept the good elements like squad revival and "hardcore" spotting behaviour, and the loadout system is actually a lot better. You can use any main weapon, and any gadget, so you essentially build your own custom class within the four archetypes- Which is good because the way Dice decides on its class abilities has always felt arbitrary at best. Seems they decided to cut out the middle man and just let you make your own. I've been using a Kriss, a .44 revolver with a big fuck-off scope on it as a pocket sniper, medkits to keep myself alive and recon drones. I'll probably tool up another pre-set with an LMG, rocket launcher and ammo crate.

On the downside I think that's going to mean overall class interaction/teamplay is going to take a blow. Medics were always a popular class in the past because you got to heal yourself, and as a consequence there were plenty around to give revives; but so far in this beta I've only been revived maybe twice. People just won't be playing medic if they can have medkits on a recon or assault. And then there's the elephant in the room...

It's a hero shooter. You have to choose a predefined "operator", or "specialist" or whatever they call it. They have specific abilities. They have annoying voice lines. Ehhh. I'm very nonplussed about it. I don't see why they decided to jump on the trend this late, it's already stale. Just let us make our own character. You've already ruined the idea of having a strong class silhouette like the old titles had; at least the last game had a bunch of generic Germans and Allies, but this game is literally Clone Wars with zero visual distinction between the sides. You can literally only tell friend from foe because of the blue dot.

All in all Battlefield 1 will remain the peak of the series. It's looking more and more like that game was a complete fluke and they didn't learn anything from why it was a hit, but this one is at least more promising than the last.

>>25243
I can never get on with the Battlefield series. I also tried the beta, and it was a case of spawn, run for three minutes to find enemies, gun a couple of people down then I get sniped. Which is the same experience I had with 4 and 1 and V. Maybe if I had friends to play it with, all riding a tank together, I might enjoy it. I much prefer the fast food approach of CoD, where it only takes 2 seconds to respawn and the levels are small enough that you're constantly engaged.

>>25244

When I play Battlefield it's mostly in TDM or domination for that reason. Rush is usually smaller and more infantry focussed too.

I think the biggest reason I like 1 most of all is that nearly every map was playable as an infantryman, even solo. They were big but not so big you had to run for half an hour to get to the fighting, and vehicles were quite toned down compared to the rest of the series.

I know what you mean about CoD though. I played a good amount of it last year, it's not only constantly engaging but it's easy to be good at, too. I was getting top scores, sprinting around quick-scoping people and all that stuff I thought was supposed to be "MLG Pro 420 gamer", but turns out just the skill ceiling is just pretty low. You don't even need a headshot for a OHK, players will accuse you of hacking when you're just using basic situational awareness like listening for their footsteps, there's a lot of cheesy gadgets etc.

Metroid Dread is really good. I wonder how many times a fully powered up Samus Aran has lost all her abilities at the start of a game. Stealth areas are tense but with the invisibility cloak and the ability to see where the evil robot is on the map, it's not hugely threatening.

>>25242
Fair point about being able to ski around solo, but playing the objective and skiing fast into and out of it was kind of the point. You are absolutely correct that Hi Rez went with the money and gave up on Ascend, but not to go all Marxist if there was server code around the game would not be dead. There's a reason Doom, Quake, Quake II, Q3A etc. are still around, and that's because people who care can keep it going. In no shape, way or form am I trying to denigrate Hi Rez developers, but the management there can go eat a fat one.

I'm enjoying Back 4 Blood. I'm glad I didn't have to drop £50 on it as it's on Game Pass, but it's surprisingly good and I'm enjoying it much more than I enjoyed the beta. Not sure about the progression mechanics (doing levels gives you supply points, which you use to advance supply lines to unlock new cards and cosmetics). The card system can be hit or miss. Some cards don't seem useful, while others are essential. The corruption cards, which are modifiers which make the game more difficult, are also a mixed bunch. The one that spawns flocks of birds that alert the horde if disturbed is good for tension. But the one that creates a fog in which you can only see 5 foot in front of you is not so fun, it's like playing Turok. I hope the game has longevity, but considering the shit show of their previous game (Evolve), I won't be too optimistic.

I know I'm a manchild for caring about this, but 343 Industries have made Halo so bewilderingly ugly I don't even want to play it anymore. SSD's don't grow on trees either and the latest update was so large it pushed mine into the red zone capacity wise. Some of these new armours look more like already out of place Skyrim mods, let alone 26th century military gear. I don't want milsim Halo, but, Christ, this is visual equivelent of pringles in yoghurt.

>>25249

Wow, I was never a huge fan of Halo's aesthetic to begin with, but that does look like complete fucking shit.

It seems to be hit and miss in games design whether they manage to get an artist who can do decent looking armour or not. Either you've got a knack for it or you don't, and this person seems to have had about as much talent as the person who designed the original launch day Elder Scrolls Online armours.

>>25249
The Gallic-inspired looks like someone fucked up a Warcraft 2 orc rendering.

>>25249
If it didn't mention Halo in the picture I would not have recognised it as anything to do with Halo (despite the recognisable weapon models) and would've assumed it's an ad for yet another money sucking auto playing mobile game.

>>25251
I don't know enough about ancient Gaul or Warcraft to know which one you mean, but I believe you.

>>25250
>>25252
That's the thing, it's all so generic that it barely even registers as "Halo". With very few exceptions SPARTAN armour permutations had a utilitarian or experimental reason to exist, and a design that grounded them in the "reality" of the universe. "Pilot" armour had a big visor, "EOD" was bulkier than standard, I don't even have to explain why, you know why it's obvious why and for want of a better word, sensible. Now they have chainmail, hoods and fur lining. There are also plenty of terrible weapon and vehicle skins too and there's a hint of arrogance about taking games that people worked really hard on, twenty, fifteen, ten years ago, and completely mucking up the art direction. Some of these suits will be locked behind inexplicably time-locked challenges too, so if you do really want them, for some reason, get hustling because the game's not waiting on you anymore.

MCC is the oddest game I've played, because it has all these grindy, FOMO elements like you'd expect in a game with micro-transactions and lootboxes, but there are none. This might actually be worse, because at least then you'd understand why you're being made to suffer, in the MCC it's seemingly without reason. I'm assuming Halo Infinite will be stuffed full of that kind of crap and MCC is a testbed for its implementation, but I don't know. It's not like these ideas have widespread appeal regardless. It's impossible to find an input specific match (meaning mouse and keyboard or controller only), and not that easy find games on certain playlists even on weekends. Today it's peaked at 8,300ish players. Once you remove the singleplayer component and seperate that out between CE, 2, 3, Reach, ODST and 4, you aren't really talking about a very big playerbase at all, especially when you think about how massive the Halo brand is, or was. These updates do bring improvements and new stuff I don't feel a bit sick looking at, but I don't get these armours at all. They might as well have cross-pomotional tie-ins at this point. Make your SPARTAN look like an Overwatch character, a Space Marine from Warhammer or some spandexed plonker from a Marvel film, who cares? It doesn't look like Halo anyway.

This got all rambly and I doubt anyone really cares. If you skimmed it then my point is this: 343 Industries might be crap at art design.

>>25253

Devs have to promote "continued engagement" now. In essence they have to justify their own jobs by demonstrating that people are still playing their game, and one of the ways the can do that is by having bullshit arbitrary timed events and "seasons" and all that shit. It's just an artificial way to stretch out a player's attention span.

It's like with anything. One of the things I've always said about any management strategy that's based on hitting targets and maintaining a green box on a spreadsheet is a shite way of running a business in reality, because all it does is encourages people to cheat when the goal isn't realistically achievable by "authentic" means.

For example look at NHS wait times. A hospital can't control how many patients it gets in the A&E on a saturday night, it's completely out of their hands, yet the targets are there telling them they have to do everything in their power to keep it under a four hour turnaround. There's nothing they can realistically do if they play by the book, if they're honest about it they will simply fail, because their hands are tied and the primary factor affecting things is simply how busy they are. So they fudge the numbers.

>>25253
>crap at art design

It all seems to be leading up to a place they can monetise it, but customisation doesn't really fit nicely into the Halo multiplayer world. The implementation in Halo 5 detracted from the game with the card system and overpowered legendary vehicles.

Fortnite and Overwatch have colourful and interesting skins that don't feel entirely out of place. Call of Duty seems to be struggling with variety. At a glance it just seems to be variations of bad man with elaborate face mask.

Pour some out for the days where you could play a multiplayer game without a progression system in the background.

>>25233
>>25234
DFWC starts today, first round gets released at some point soon. Meep meep :).

The ActRaiser remake is very good, to say it was announced on the day of release with very little fanfare. Hoping it's successful so they bring Quintet's other SNES games to modern consoles. Just want Illusion Of Time to get its day in the sun.

How outlandish of an idea would it be of me to suggest the three of us should play some games together? Will we be looked at like the IRC weirdos of old? Please accept my apologies if I've overstepped the mark, I'm just really, really lonely.

>>25258
I miss the old choose your own adventure threads. Is booklad still out there?

>>25258

I'd very much like that, but then again I'm one of those IRC freaks. I doubt we'd play Warsaw again though.