Video Games [ARCHIVED] Video Game • Page 1296

http://m.ign.com/articles/2018/04/0...money-than-any-film-book-or-game-says-analyst

 

Absolutely insane.

 

So when do we all do our official E3 predictions? IT'S GETTING CLOSE

 

Crawl is a lot of fun, but I'm not sure how much mileage I'll get out of it.

 

If Starfield doesn’t show up this year, I’m going to be sad.

 

Human Revolution was pretty good - at least solidly decent - in terms of extending Deus Ex's design philosophy into a very AAA game. the original was better at merging stealth, combat, and hacking into a soft RPG but HR broke these apart into "pillars" of individual play strategies and nearly entirely ditched the RPG, which I find much less compelling - and the original's level design remains nearly untouched in its casual genius.

but i think the narrative was much worse than it seems other do. in fact, i think i'm more a fan of Invisible War's narrative. Adam Jensen was just supremely boring and his motivations were exceptionally dull (it's hard to make the damsel in distress/dead girlfriend plot propellant worse, but they managed it, holy shit how little i cared about it), which exacerbated the preexisting issue of the plot just being a series of super disconnected events that happened to the player, not that the player ever really impacted or effectively engaged in. i don't mind, necessarily, that they streamlined down the original's heady mix of philosophy, conspiracy, capital and power, and all types of sci fi into the primarily singular themes of human augmentation and conspiracies therein - and the world building is quite good, with a lot of attention to detail and visual language - but Adam himself is so constantly slow on the take, so apathetic about the things he allegedly feels, so silent most of the time that he fundamentally fails both as a player avatar and as a vehicle through which an effective, emotional narrative can be told.

which, to be fair, is a classic struggle that many games have yet to address - how to integrate player freedom into a narrative without constraining choice or failing the narrative - but this, again, is why i think the older DE stories are actually more compelling - the largely depersonalized narratives permitted such freedom and even in some cases were improved upon because of such themes of shadowy puppetmasters and global conspiracies - rather than hamfistedly trying to get me to care about characters without even being arsed to finish their plotlines. ( seriously, like holy shit megan just walks out of the plot lmfao excluding that stinger. jensen, doesn't it suck ass to see your pilot and ostensible friend's corpse being looted in a parking garage for spare parts, or i guess we really don't care to ever bring her up again or even react to that? sarif's relationship with jensen was by far the most interesting of the game, and even that was left, frankly, quite unturned; jensen is just kinda like, hey, i didn't ask for this, and sarif is like, but i saved your life. end scene.)

i think it frustrates me because these don't necessarily have to be problems DE is trying to solve. to be sure, i love character driven stories, but i also love environmentally-told stories! (not that the two are mutually exclusive per se, but as aforementioned, in games, the balance is difficult enough to strike let alone to mesh with mechanics.) DE and IW both are quite good at such world-building, and HR continues to offer examples of really, really great environmental storytelling! Hengsha's kafkaesque, cramped corridors of oppressed city streets literally being built upon by the wealthy is brilliant! the eerie omnipresence of pseudo-inspiring futuristic corporate influence is wonderful (and classic DE)! but then the core narrative is just so constantly in my face and so constantly an "ehhhhhh"-eliciting guided carnival ride of muddy motivations, underbaked relationships, or just straight-up dissonance between what Adam's diary must say and what Adam emotes that it severely undercuts that by taking away the focus into a crummy, extremely video gamey character-driven narrative.

and that was, imo, one of the crucial magic tricks of the original (one which i believe underlies the game's enormous nostalgic leeway): it just dove with total aplomb into its ridiculous, campy, philosophy and global politics 101 world such that it ended up being shockingly prescient and engaging and vibrant; it was so utterly confident and content with being a game in which you shoot at men in black suits and sunglasses at night and also can find fucking Thomas Paine excerpts and later on hell yeah there will be some goddamn aliens! it was like, utterly fake it till you make it but it worked, because it's not a long-ass fetch quest for my boring as hell girlfriend. because i can enter myself into a world that's ridiculous but well-crafted; i can't lose myself in a generic, vapid series of relationships that can't even be maintained past a cutscene.

 

Well, Bethesda have a presser this year....not sure what they could be planning to take up the entire event.

They must have something to show.

 

Skyrim on phones

 

If you buy the new ESO on disc release this fall you'll get a free DLC that'll add an arcade machine in the game on which you can play Skyrim

 

In all seriousness I think they’ll show Starfield even if it’s not releasing this year, this isn’t a fallout situation where people know what they’re getting. Idk if it’s too soon for a new DOOM announcement.

 

I do wanna get my first crazy E3 prediction out of the way though (this isn’t my idea)

Microsoft announces Xbox Live gold is bundled with game pass (pay $10 a month for online and 120+ games and all new first party exclusives) Not sure how that merger would work but hey it’s a dream for a reason.

 

I could see a 50% discount for either one if you have the other

 

They brought up this possibility on KF Gamescast yesterday. I feel like MS wouldn’t leave that much money on the table by ditching Gold, but if they did, that’d be a nuclear move and Sony would absolutely have to respond

 

I just found out The Warriors game is on PS4 and I know what I'm doing after work today.

 

@cshadows2887 this might interest you

also the second season was truly fantastic, esp the last 2 episodes. i'd encourage y'all to get it.

 

oh i finally updated my grouvee the other day :D lol

 

Yeah that’s defnitely where I got it from lol I couldn’t remember where, can’t wait for Tim’s insane Nintendo predictions lol.

 

I finally got Horizon Zero Dawn, only took forever

 

Better be a new Arkham game

 

Loved it so much. Memorable.

 

It seems right up my alley so I'm EXTREMELY excited to play it, gonna be a slow last 4 hours of work before I can haha

 

HZD is amazing, don't listen to anyone that says otherwise

 

as for "not gamers", my choice is xbox - interactive games, the best for party and lots of fun actually; Mario - classy, but will always be my favorite;
Music Puzzle - the only app-game in my phone

 

Radical Heights does cool things that PUBG and Fortnite aren’t

This sounds pretty promising