April 2025 General Game Discussion

[Zed Clampet]

Played some more Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and still absolutely loving it.

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But let me tell you, then I decided to take a break tonight and try out Oblivion. I got to the character creator, and the "randomize character" button is like playing Five Nights at Freddy's. Every time a new one of those hideous monstrosities popped up on the screen, I jumped and screamed.

So I decided I had to manually adjust my character's face. I figured that it probably started out looking okay, but when you hit the randomize button, it sends those sliders all over the place. So I took them all to zero and this is my new character, Brick Johnson:

Okay, well maybe I touched up the picture a bit. Here's the real Brick Johnson:

You know, I was really happy with this until I touched it up. Still this isn't too shabby for Oblivion.

But really, I think I should have done the remaster.

 

[Johnway]

more Doom2 goodness so that means playing Ramp 2024 - We've finished 2 more stations. The station completed was Transfer Depot so more UAC bases. This one had quite a few maps i liked or stood out:

heartbeat is your standard UAC base map thats all well made and isn't all that difficult. but it does have one gimmick: some engagements have a time limit, usually not enough for you to take your time and you're forced to take risks to get to the objective. it makes for an interesting challenge and helps increase the difficulty without thinking all too hard on balancing the engagement.

next map is Cyber Crusher gaiden. its one huge factory and i liked the detailing on this one but otherwise a standard map.

Toxins refined isn't a huge map but its well made and again, spent time taking snaps as ref material if i was going to make a doom map.

finally extraction operation, its simple enough break out of prison , call escape vehicle and escape. Its a step up from your usual Doom map with GZdoom elements, theres a few different enemies and there are objectives to complete. but besides the level design that i found appealing, was the final escape where after signaling your ride you have to face off against hordes of monsters. When the vehicle does arrive, its just blasting any surviving monsters when it lands and takes off. Epic stuff.


moving onto the next station, Lost starport, there wasn't really much to say about the maps. Nothing spectacular or interesting and one even left a slight distaste playing it. The only map that stood out was the longest one: Hellroelectric - demons have invaded a hydrodam and its pumping blood instead of water. As a first map, i have to say its pretty good. nicely designed, filled with various advanced elements and plays reasonably well. My only criticism is perhaps too much backtracking. A switch would open a door halfway across the map as opposed something nearby. The Archvile sewer maze is pretty tedious as its a switch hunt and wasn't difficult as i corner camped them one by one. lastly i did encounter some bugs in one encounter once you trigger the trap the elevator goes up and theres no way up or down the elevator. in one attempt the elevator shot back up to the previous floor and refused to function locking me out of the engagement.

 

[Zloth]

Why is this exact same pattern recognition great when Dark Souls or Elden Ring kills you 14 times in a row, but suddenly this scrub has to fight the fights twice and suddenly it's bad. You know what else is bad, this guy's gaming abilities. I've played 4 hours and lost one fight, the one I mentioned above that I arrived to almost dead.

Well, he answers that right in the article:

Git gud, right? I'd accept that reproach for a lot of games, but the trial-and-error rote memorization needed to reach credits in Clair Obscur frustrated me not just because it was constantly demanding, but because it drowned out the fantastic turn-based core.

This is not correct. That tag was always buried near the bottom because so few people thought it looked like a JRPG, but now that reviewers are calling it that, more people are voting for it.

I tried to look up just how this system works but couldn't find much. I think the developers get to put some in to start it all off, then users vote on tags, then developers delete irrelevant tags and pick from the top 20 to appear on the store page. I could really be wrong there, though.

Claire Obscura's top 6 right now are: turn-based combat, story rich, fantasy, exploration, JRPG, and Action RPG. The store page shows turn-based combat, story rich, fantasy, and JRPG, though - no exploration tag. That means it isn't just the most popular tags for sure.

Odd, I didn't read the review but got the qte statement from another video, so its a common misconception then.

There's a whole spectrum of QTEs and QTEness. (Yes, that's a word Edge, quit underlining it!!) Are those old Guitar Hero games just one long series of QTEs, for instance? What about this from FF7:Rebirth?

 

[Zed Clampet]

I'm officially, and I'm serious this time, cutting way down on my video game purchasing. Right now, as of this moment, I believe I may very well have the best "Now Playing" list of games in my lifetime, headlined in the AAA category by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Oblivion Remaster.

I've got a dozen other great games from all different genres that I have going right now. Two remarkable city builders in Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic and Kaiserpunk. I've got a really fun arcade shooter in Zombieland 3D USA that I'm still dabbling in. I've got Mini-Metro and Mini-Motorways which are fantastic, quick strategy games that have god-level replayability. I'll be playing these for years. And I can't forget the best cozy therapy game I've ever played, Farm Together 2, which I now have over 200 hours in. And in a story of the rich getting richer, in just a couple of weeks, the biggest retail sim of all, King of Retail, is releasing a sequel.

And then there are my soulmates, Satisfactory and V Rising (Expedition 33 is edging it's way in to join this group) that just came out with major updates. So, yeah, Valve, I'm going to be cutting back on that 20 plus new games a month thing I've had going on. For now I have what I need.

 

[Pifanjr]

Last time I played Inscryption I had just gotten to the beginning of a cutscene of sorts. Today when I started the game again it had skipped the cutscene with no way to get it back, so I had to look it up online, which was a bit of a bother. Luckily someone had uploaded just that part.

I beat another one of the bosses and updated my deck a bit, as I had two battles where I couldn't play any cards at all.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Well, he answers that right in the article:

I read it, and I disagree with it. His reason is just arbitrarily applied based on his personal preferences. "Cause turn-based" is not a good reason.

I tried to look up just how this system works but couldn't find much. I think the developers get to put some in to start it all off, then users vote on tags, then developers delete irrelevant tags and pick from the top 20 to appear on the store page. I could really be wrong there, though.

This is mostly incorrect, but probably how most people think it works. I have Steam back-end access, so I looked it up. The developers do not have anything directly to do with which tags show on the front page, and which tags show up varies from person to person. Valve uses an algorithm and the algorithm's primary deciders are

1) tags your friends have applied to the game
2) tags based on your activity
3) tags applied/voted on by the community

Developers cannot delete user tags directly but can request that Valve delete them. And while developers can use the "Tag Wizard" to weight tags, the weights actually favor user votes to developer weights.

My speculation is that this is to allow the massive number of players to keep developers from behaving badly with regard to tags. It is a 100 percent guarantee that many developers would just put the most popular tags into their games if they thought that would increase visibility and sales. By prioritizing user tags, this prevents this.

The Valve documentation goes on and on, but I think these were the relevant things. There is a lot about the "tag wizard" and how their discovery system works. Also interesting is that apparently new tags have to be approved by Valve. "New" meaning tags that have never been applied to any other game before.

Lastly, I'd like to point out that the developers consider the game a JRPG. I've gotten 6 hours of sleep in the last 3 days, so I have no idea what I said about this previously, so don't expect me to be consistent, but I somewhat disagree that it's a JRPG, but if the developers say that it is, then that ends the debate so far as I'm concerned. My preference is that JRPGs be more, you know, Japanese. Japanese art, music, characters, dialogue, etc.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Last time I played Inscryption I had just gotten to the beginning of a cutscene of sorts. Today when I started the game again it had skipped the cutscene with no way to get it back, so I had to look it up online, which was a bit of a bother. Luckily someone had uploaded just that part.

I beat another one of the bosses and updated my deck a bit, as I had two battles where I couldn't play any cards at all.

Did you say before that you'd already had a successful run or am I misremembering?

About the cutscenes, I had a game where I kept accidentally clicking with the mouse during cutscenes, which instantly skipped to the end, and I was actually wanting to see the cutscenes. That may have been a Darksider game.

 

[Zloth]

Phew, finished FF7 Rebirth just now. That final boss fight... that was a bit much. First you fight a Jenova form, then Sepheroth. Depending on how you count, there are 9 phases to his battle for a total of 10. No rests in between, no opportunity to save, but it does let you go back to the start of the most recent phase of the battle instead of having to start all over again. I got wasted 3 times in the final phase so, if I had to start over, I would have rage-quit for sure.

The whole battle, including some time to make a screenshot and some time to put the game on pause so I could read how the frak to beat a couple of the phases on the internet, took just over two hours. And it was a VERY near thing at the end. I think it was the longest boss fight I've ever done.

 

[Pifanjr]

Did you say before that you'd already had a successful run or am I misremembering?

About the cutscenes, I had a game where I kept accidentally clicking with the mouse during cutscenes, which instantly skipped to the end, and I was actually wanting to see the cutscenes. That may have been a Darksider game.

I have done multiple successful runs and I've unlocked the New Game button. I now have to beat one more boss.

Accidentally skipping cutscenes is the worst. Especially if the last save is over half an hour ago. I've also had times where I've accidentally skipped dialogue, which is especially bad when you're in a tutorial.