September 2024 General Game Discussion Thread

[Brian Boru]

if you’re into strange first person simulation games

Hey Zed, you're up!
ETA: oh never mind, you saw it.

That sounds pretty good Neo, but the Steam screenies are mostly dark—neither dark nor vermin float my boat. Is the setting generally tough for old eyes and/or after-dinner tummy?

Every man has 2 wolves inside of him

Plenty have 2 Manchesters—City & Utd

what halloween game?

https://www.vulture.com/article/best-horror-games.html

 

[ZedClampet]

https://www.vulture.com/article/best-horror-games.html

As expected, that's a terrible list meant for non-horror fans. There are a bunch of better, more recent games. Hey, that gives me an idea for a thread

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Xcom Chimera Squad was a puzzle tactics game.

Lets say I liked Chimera Squad and not Into the Breach, then.

I breezed through Chimera Squad without frustration on normal but Ive started like 5 games of Into the Breach over however long its been out and never got past the first world far as I remember, zero motivation to get good at it.

 

[neogunhero]

That sounds pretty good Neo, but the Steam screenies are mostly dark—neither dark nor vermin float my boat. Is the setting generally tough for old eyes and/or after-dinner tummy?

So far from what I’ve played, it’s definitely dim. I wouldn’t say it’s completely dark like other first person survival games, but as night rolls in things do get very dim. However you can always go to sleep until sunrise, but that mainly only affects exterior spaces. The apartment block that is given to you is very dark when you first explore it, but as you go along you can add light sources as you begin to decorate it.

 

[Zloth]

View: https://youtu.be/tqvFdIoRZAY?si=Pm5yvHm7trhUAmZh


I don't think I would spend more than about 6 hours or so in the game. I would buzz around places I remember, maybe try to fly under some bridges, and that would be about the end of it. Still, it sure does look incredible!

 

[Pifanjr]

I didn't feel like continuing Baldur's Gate 3 yesterday and I didn't feel like playing more Vermintide 2 either, so I ended up starting a new Minecraft game with a new modpack: FTB Interaction Remastered.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I liked the idea of having questlines to give some structure. Turns out that this mod pack makes recipes a lot more complex, but luckily makes gathering resources a lot easier as well.

For example, you can no longer just turn a wooden log into planks. Instead, you have to craft a flint knife, use that on the logs to turn them into pieces, then craft those pieces into planks, giving you about 1 plank per wooden log. Then you can use those planks to make a water powered sawmill that can turn one log into 4 wooden planks (which is the normal conversion rate), but only one log at a time.
Similarly, you can't just craft a furnace with 8 cobblestone, it requires a whole bunch of stuff. So you start with a clay kiln, which also can only take a single item at a time. You don't have to refuel it though, it works by lighting a fire underneath and the kiln itself allows you to create a charcoal block that will keep a fire lit indefinitely.

However, the mod also includes a flint axe that's trivial to make and which chops an entire tree at once when you chop the bottom block. It also includes blocks that generate stuff like seeds, sand, gravel, fish, meat, bones and leather using some easy to get resources.

The mod includes an entire tutorial in the form of a sky island floating in the void where no enemies spawn with a whole bunch of quests teaching you the basics. I think I've played about 3-4 hours and I've only made it halfway through the tutorial.

Xcom Chimera Squad was a puzzle tactics game.

I think XCOM: Chimera Squad had too much hidden information and RNG to be considered a puzzle tactics game. I don't think you could see what each enemy was planning and both hit chance and the amount of damage depended on RNG. However, I do agree that it felt like a puzzle tactics game because it left very little room for mistakes, so you had to find the "correct" solution for every room.

Tactical Breach Wizards gives you near perfect information from what I remember, so it's much more of a puzzle tactics game. I think the only thing that's hidden is the type of enemy that comes in as a reinforcement.

 

[Frindis]

*drool* I sincerely hope that this will flourish!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trpVSbcDogM

 

[Johnway]

was watching some art tuts and vids and tyler has uploaded a pretty interesting one. Essentially a deep dive on the design of concord and how bad it was. Goes through art theory and how concord messes it up. Badly.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVyXUMJLzE0&t=968s

 

[Zloth]

Wait a minute... Final Fantasy 16 is out on PC now, but it only costs $50!? It's $70 with all the DLC included, but that's cheaper than I expected!

 

[Frindis]

@Johnway It still amazes me how some of the IGN reporters say that Concord is a good game and just misunderstood. If the majority of people do not buy your product, it is because they don't like it. It does not matter what you want to communicate within the game if it fails to deliver (depending on what you want with it off course) I also throw blame at the developers because they messed up a lot of the character art. This is something you can't blame on just a strict schedule or similar cause, this has to do with a severe lack of communication and feedback! Did they even consider including player feedback at all?

 

[Johnway]

@Johnway It still amazes me how some of the IGN reporters say that Concord is a good game and just misunderstood. If the majority of people do not buy your product, it is because they don't like it. It does not matter what you want to communicate within the game if it fails to deliver (depending on what you want with it off course) I also throw blame at the developers because they messed up a lot of the character art. This is something you can't blame on just a strict schedule or similar cause, this has to do with a severe lack of communication and feedback! Did they even consider including player feedback at all?

Yeah 7 years of development and i think it missed the overwatch/class pvp game boat by years. I think it was half cooked and the game had no USP. hell, not even the characters or ideas were probably well done so there was no relevance to the game. didn't help that it cost £40 and had no marketing.

As i mentioned previously the first time i heard of it was probably a week or couple days before i heard of it and even then it was indifference and only paid attention when it started to crash and burn before takeoff. Then again ign is known to be a little more generous but i've not read into the ign article and boy is it a bad take to say concord was a winner.

 

[Colif]

hmmm

 

[Colif]

@Johnway It still amazes me how some of the IGN reporters say that Concord is a good game and just misunderstood. If the majority of people do not buy your product, it is because they don't like it. It does not matter what you want to communicate within the game if it fails to deliver (depending on what you want with it off course) I also throw blame at the developers because they messed up a lot of the character art. This is something you can't blame on just a strict schedule or similar cause, this has to do with a severe lack of communication and feedback! Did they even consider including player feedback at all?

I saw somewhere that games teams are hired for 18 month periods at Microsoft to make games (to avoid paying benefits), and after that a new team is hired to make the game for another 18 months, and that continues until game is released.

So if a game has 3 or more different teams working on it to make a cohesive product, and there is no continuity between teams, how do they expect the end result to be any good at all?

I don't know if that is case across industry but it sure explain why some games come out that lack a vision. It might be good for the bottom line as its made but the result at end might be bad. Wasting 200 million to produce a game that lasts 2 weeks on the market isn't a winning strategy... unless you are making a movie designed to fail.

How many people worked on those character designs? Who approved them?

 

[Brian Boru]

I saw somewhere that games teams are hired for 18 month periods at Microsoft to make games

You'll have a tough job finding a large company in any industry which doesn't do that. MS has something like ¼ million employees, and their products are not even-flow assembly line stuff, so managing their labor capacity must be a major headache—they can't afford to be stuck with tens of thousands of underused employees during quiet times.

Look at Hollywood in the same Entertainment sector—as far as I know every movie and TV show is an individual company which folds when the job is done. Full-time employment for all doesn't work in sporadic load environments.

(to avoid paying benefits)

That could be a significant reason in low-skill jobs where bringing in new people is an easy change. I doubt it's a factor for companies like MS tho, since there is a big shortage of highly skilled staff in the USA, so those with such skills can clean up via $ for contract work.

There are of course plenty of low and medium skill jobs in game dev too, but again the US has around 4% unemployment—which is around the perfect level—so most companies won't have much wiggle room for messing with employees.

after that a new team is hired to make the game for another 18 months, and that continues until game is released

I could be wrong, but my general knowledge of biz practices is that what you describe doesn't happen. Other full-timers will have left during the 18 months, so some contractors will be offered full-time. Others, deemed crucial to the project, will have exemptions applied to them. More will be previous contractors brought back again. And finally, brand new people, very likely in the low and medium skill positions.

 

[Colif]

EA sees Ubisoft under threat.. says... hold my beer

EA shows concept video of user generated game content using AI tools, and it's a world of cardboard

EA demonstrates user generated content to investors with a world of cardboard boxes powered by AI tools.

www.windowscentral.com

 

[neogunhero]

Haven’t played a ton of games lately. I did manage to find a few hours last night so I played some more Age of Empires 4. It’s a quick and easy game to pick up, and I don’t mind not finishing my skirmish match I started in case I need to stop playing. Last night I decided to focus on naval warfare but got destroyed by AI in hard difficulty. I’m not very good at managing my navy haha.

Looking forward to checking out Frostpunk 2 this weekend. Admittedly, I haven’t played Frostpunk 1 before, but being that a brand new game is coming out day 1 on Game Pass I may as well check it out. Maybe I’ll just watch a refresher video on the first game and get caught up. It’s been getting good reviews too so that’s piqued my interest.

Speaking of new games. Ara: History Untold comes out day 1 on GP next Tuesday as well. Definitely going to check that out, people are saying it’s a Civ competitor. I’m not huge into the Civ games, but again, gotta put my GP subscription to use.

Edit: Just looked into Ara a bit more and I think I would enjoy it. It’s a mix of Civ style diplomacy gameplay elements, and city builder elements. Seems very interesting.

 

[Pifanjr]

Not a PC game, but last night I noticed Elder Scrolls Castles downloaded to my phone. I pre-ordered(it was free) this game on the App Store probably an entire year ago, then suddenly it just downloaded as soon as it was released. I played for an hour last night while unwinding for bed and it was decently fun.

It’s basically just an Elder Scrolls skinned version of Fallout Shelter. You run a castle and have to build rooms, place workstations, have your villagers work at these stations, and gather resources required to make new machines. For a mobile game so far it’s pretty good, but it was making my iPhone 12 Mini overheat. Even turning down the graphics to Medium kept my phone nice and toasty. Good game to play on a cold winter morning.

I suspect this game will eventually come to PC as did Fallout Shelter. It’s a fun casual little time waster. Nothing spectacular, but well made. One weird thing is that I’ve been gathering green gems, which seem to indicate the presence of a premium store, but I haven’t been able to find it. Maybe it will pop up later on as you progress, which I suppose is a good way to not just immediately shove in app purchases in your players face as soon as they boot up the game for the first time.

I decided to try out Elder Scrolls Castles as well. It takes quite a while before you're not just clicking whatever the game prompts you to click and after that there isn't really much to do. Compared to Fallout: Shelter, Castles feels a lot more grindy to get anything done while the rewards are less interesting. There are a bunch of different resources you need to progress but you can only get them while the game is open, so you can't just check in once or twice a day and make decent progress. Plus most of the tasks you get just give XP as a reward, which is a lot less satisfying than getting caps or a lunchbox in Fallout Shelter.

My kid was very fascinated by it though. She liked Fallout Shelter as well, but I think the castle setting is more interesting for her.