[Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

I'm ready go tonight. There's a party, alright. We don't need the raisin for joy, oh yeah. Tick down to midnight.
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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Delthazar » Sat Oct 19, 2019 11:34 am

I tend to always forget about PDXCON, the annual Paradox event, despite playing a ton of their games to the tune of dozens or hundreds of hours each over the past several years, but 2019's PDX led with a banger that's hard to miss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlOXhOxEum0

It's been a minute since Crusader Kings 2. Seven years! CK2 just happens to be free right now on Steam - either permanently or perhaps just for the length of PDX 2019 - so go grab it if you don't already have it (it's been free before) and see what all the fuss is about. It's grand strategy from the POV of a noble/royal bloodline rather than just the wider nations of a Civilization or Europa Universalis. Complicated, but that distinction means your personal scenario can get pretty wild.

There's screenshots over yonder. It obviously looks a lot nicer than CK2, given that huge seven year gap.

https://kotaku.com/rejoice-for-crusader ... 1839186137

RPS has more details on Crusader Kings 3's features, with some assumptions

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/1 ... ow-so-far/

Moving on, I haven't played Surviving Mars yet, despite possibly owning two copies of it somehow (thanks, Humble Monthly and Epic Store weekly giveaways) but there's a kinda-sorta successor coming already, this time in a post-apocalyptic setting

https://youtu.be/YgNxDzoCzYI

If it looks pretty rough, maybe that's because it's an Early Access title. You can find that on Epic. I'm curious, but the part of me that feels like fiddling with post-apoc management sims would probably just go check in on how that big Fallout mod for Hearts of Iron IV is doing.

Elsewhere at PDX it's mainly expansions. Stellaris is getting another called Federations, Battletech is getting something called Heavy Metal. So I'm now at least three or four Stellaris expansions behind and I'm also still just barely past the Battletech tutorial.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Delthazar » Sat Oct 19, 2019 11:47 am

In not-Paradox news, Disco Elysium is out and is getting incredible reviews almost everywhere, with the possible exception of Austin over at Waypoint, who mainly seems to wonder whether or not the game is too in love with the sound of its own voice, which is totally fair.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWWA1jnI5N4

But it's getting tons of comparisons to old-school bangers like Planescape Torment, if that tickles any fancies. I'd jump in right now but my backlog is no longer manageable... and The Outer Worlds is out next week which is only gonna knock a 60+ hour CRPG like Disco Elysium out of the rotation immediately. So.

I also keep seeing positive chatter about Manifold Garden, out now on Apple Arcade and Epic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ_yxZwAoCg

Switch owners who missed it on PC: Return of the Obra Dinn just got ported. Get it, it's good. Some might say it was the best game of 2018.

Keep yer eyes on this, too.

https://twitter.com/SteamDB/status/1185 ... 03808?s=20

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Falcon Critical » Sat Oct 19, 2019 2:55 pm

Manifold Garden is giving me The Witness vibes.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by True Perception » Tue Oct 22, 2019 4:31 pm

Interesting. I got a copy of Atelier Iris from Game Stop, and it just arrived with some obnoxious metal tape over the clear plastic part of the disc. I was immediately worried. It was obvious that there was some damage underneath, too. I decided to pop it into my PC and start it in the emulator. Absolutely anything that could be called "video" had serious skipping, lag, and freezing. Shit! So I plug in the wonky PS2. At first it would not read. I could hear it struggling with the tape, too. I popped in a known working game to test (Disgaea), and it started right up. Did some more finagling, and now it's working. Funny thing? No skipping. Apparently that metal tape fools the PS2's head, but not my computer's.

Unfortunately, the game looks kinda bad on my TV. A little fuzzy, almost to the point of double vision. I turned the TV to "Standard" and that's helped, but it's still a little noticeable. We'll see how it affects my interest in playing the game...

Edit: Oof! Certain colors for the character name don't look terrible. Particularly blue and white, so far.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by True Perception » Tue Oct 22, 2019 4:41 pm

Hmm. Didn't notice before that Popo has the same VA as Marona from Phantom Brave.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Bier_Engel » Tue Oct 22, 2019 4:55 pm

I've tried a few entries in the Atelier series but I could never get more than an hour or so in before losing interest, which is weird, because I liked Mana Khemia, so I assumed I'd like those too.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by True Perception » Tue Oct 22, 2019 6:21 pm

Well, MK has that school thing going on, which I believe is up your alley.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Bier_Engel » Tue Oct 22, 2019 6:40 pm

Something about it was just better, though. The most recent one I tried, Rorona, had a day structure not unlike Persona but somehow I immediately felt trapped and like I wouldn't know how to spend my limited days properly... either gathering materials or doing other things to fulfill quests. It just felt more stifling in that game for whatever raisin (I don't recall MK having a strict time limit on things but I could be wrong as it's been 10+ years). Also wasn't too into the combat.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by True Perception » Tue Oct 22, 2019 7:36 pm

The newer Atelier games have never seemed interesting, but I liked Iris, so I'm going to try to play through farther than I did previously.

I remember liking MK, but didn't get far into it. Maybe because it was on PSP? I never used that thing much.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Bier_Engel » Tue Oct 22, 2019 7:42 pm

I played it on PS2. I think maybe it was on both?

E: I guess the PSP version was ruined with abysmal loading times.

PS2 loading times were fine. But yeah, as someone who played PSP in general, I learned to save often. Many games would just freeze. I especially had issues with Hexys Force. Liked the game a lot, but the random freezes would make me rage quit for periods of time.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by True Perception » Wed Oct 23, 2019 2:26 am

Hmm. I didn't know it was on PS2. I might have to try it that way. ... eventually.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by True Perception » Wed Oct 23, 2019 5:44 pm

I find it weird that I'm noticing VAs more and more. Delsus is the same person that does Deego's former soldier buddy from Rogue Galaxy.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Falcon Critical » Mon Oct 28, 2019 12:14 pm

Came across this while scanning the RPS newsfeed. Looks like a new stardew with a bigger world. Still early access but looks like it'll scratch that same itch.

https://tropicalpuppy.com/fantasy-farmi ... ge-season/

https://youtu.be/c-aPwK18D5w

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Delthazar » Fri Nov 01, 2019 5:21 pm

Blizzcon.

This year's event is a weird one for obvious raisins. There was an apology upfront, a lot of the usual vague platitudes from their president a la accountability and doing better in the future and whatever, 'course nothing in the way of exact details.

A few words on the Hong Kong situation was expected, but some actual action was what they needed. Cutting the ban in half obviously wasn't enough. Returning the prize money wasn't enough. They probably needed to cancel the ban entirely and, I dunno, double that money. Maybe they'll get around to that after they see some quarterly numbers. Or not.

Anyway. Games. Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 are things.

https://youtu.be/9bRWIdOMfro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RdDpqCmjb4

Diablo 2 is looking like a return to Diablo 2's aesthetic, for better or worse. Some of the new stuff is nice. A little more environmental verticality goes a long way. Mounts! Riding horseback to get through repeat map runs will go a longer way. Plus it looks like you can fight on horseback to some extent. RP a Dothraki if you want. Since it sounds like Diablo 4's world is more open rather than segmented in act locations like before, we'll kinda need horses, I imagine.

Druid/Sorc/Barbarian are the three classes they're showing right now. More are probably coming - a Diablo game hasn't shipped with less than five classes since the original. I don't remember Diablo 3 well enough to really know how much has changed for these first three.

Player characters being far more customizable than before in terms of faces and skin tones is also big. Looking forward to that. Assuming I play Diablo 4 at all, of course. I feel like my time with this style of game might be long done.

https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/1/20944 ... skill-tree
https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/1/20944 ... appearance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKXS_YA9s7E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZl1yGUetjI

Overwatch 2 is maybe a bit more confusing. Cosmetic unlocks from the first game will carry over into the second, which is super cool, and... some of the Overwatch 2 stuff will appear in Overwatch 1? Maybe all of it, at least in terms of the traditional Overwatch-y PVP gameplay, modes and characters and whatnot. This is maybe thanks to Blizzard kinda having a whole esports league built around OG Overwatch that needs to be considered in their calculus a bit. So, the two Overwatches will live on in parallel as far as the competitive PVP game is concerned.

The new focus for Overwatch 2 is co-op PVE content. There will finally be a full story campaign, building on the seasonal 4-player Left 4 Dead-like stuff they've done before in the first Overwatch. No idea how many missions it'll have, overall length, etc. But it will come with a character progression system for ability upgrades and stuff, which is neat, and makes sense as a new bag of tricks they can use for a co-op PVE game.

The interrelation between Overwatch 1 and 2 makes the latter feel like less than a true full sequel, more than a mere expansion, so I guess... a companion piece? It's weird, and I wonder how that will affect their pricing. OW1 launched at like $30 or something so repeating that with OW2 might make sense.

...oh, and we're getting Sojourn, finally

https://www.polygon.com/blizzcon/2019/1 ... zzcon-2019
https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/1/20944 ... sion-saved
https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/1/20942 ... journ-echo

Diablo 4 might be another PC-first banger that gets console ports a little later. Overwatch 2 is confirmed for all current platforms, even the Switch - right outta the gate this time. No release dates for either yet. But there's been talk of both games for long enough they could possibly get 'em out next year.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Falcon Critical » Sat Nov 02, 2019 3:44 am

That wasn't an apology, and chat being disabled for their livestream implies they knew it.

While I do have fond memories of Diablo as as series, what drove me away from D3 was the constant clicking. At the time Blizzard were weirdly elitist about not doing gamepad support and now my interest in the genre is gone.

Overwatch 2 is an expansion dressed up as a new game. I like the art and lore of Overwatch, but I didn't play the first game and won't play this either. I find it amusing that Tumblr is discussing Lena finally moving from crocs to sneakers.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by True Perception » Mon Nov 04, 2019 8:06 pm

Man, that first D4 vid was awesome. Finally got around to watching it. Somehow, I feel the gameplay won't stand up to lore, but I've only played the first one, so who knows.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Delthazar » Wed Nov 13, 2019 1:34 pm

I still can't believe this exists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu-wfcEKpXk

*insert clip of Austin Walker repeatedly saying "hmm" in increasingly concerned tones*

I wouldn't advise anyone get their hopes up too high for this. :pac like if Deadly Premonition was the Shenmue of 2010 then Shenmue 3 is kinda looking like the Deadly Premonition of 2019. And that's not counting the actual Deadly Premonition 2 we're getting next year, which I also can't believe exists.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Thunderhead » Wed Nov 13, 2019 6:07 pm

Shenmue sucks.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Delthazar » Thu Nov 14, 2019 7:51 pm

Here's some interesting tidbits from X019, some new, some we've seen bits of before

https://youtu.be/7FUw-g65OUg

Last Stop, from the folks who made the dialogue-less X-Files-ish thing Virginia a few years back

https://youtu.be/rAbI0fewc7w

First gameplay trailer for Age of Empires IV, which... I think was announced last year? I can't remember.

https://youtu.be/cbkaSTcK6dY

I'm still not sure how I feel about Wasteland 3 since that dreadful comedy trailer at E3 or whatever a while back (I should really, y'know, actually start Wasteland 2 one of these days) but hey, a snowy post-apocalyptic Colorado is at least a somewhat different post-apocalyptic Colorado than usual

https://youtu.be/JVXqGQC9J2o

...phew, DONTNOD's Tell Me Why looks like it's going to be a lot. It'll be a three part adventure mystery, with all three parts hitting in Summer 2020. DONTNOD have been mostly successful at hitting the right marks with their themes and characters up to this point so I really hope they get this one right. For more, read Patrick's legwork: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywa7 ... -character

https://youtu.be/Obxd078UvPQ

Obsidian's next joint is Grounded, which I suppose you could describe as RUST + Honey I Shrunk The Kids. RPS has a deep drive already over here: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/1 ... ival-game/

https://youtu.be/jWpcUH-tKEU

No one seems to have any clue what Rare's Everwild is yet. The best guesses I've seen lean towards an open world co-op sandbox. It looks gorgeous though, like three parts Breath of the Wild and one part Mononoke.

Everything here seems destined for Game Pass and will therefore be on yer assorted Windows boxes in addition to the Xboxes few of us actually own. Anything from Rare probably won't budge from those platforms but I doubt something like Tell Me Why or Last Stop won't find their way to Steam or EGS or the other consoles eventually.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by True Perception » Fri Nov 15, 2019 9:39 pm

Brace yourselves... I bought Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order today. I know! Two brand new games in one year!

Joking aside, it's pretty good so far. It is a bit buggy, graphically, and the controls feel weird and loose at first, but once you get going, it works well. The relationship between Cal and BD works. The story feels a little loose, but I only just got to the second full planet (went with Dathomir, since you get to choose that or the one that feels more like it will forward the plot).

I was planning on playing the whole weekend, but my apartment decided to not cooperate, and I have no power in my room, so I'll have to make use of the living room when it doesn't mess with other people.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by True Perception » Sun Nov 17, 2019 1:29 pm

So, my room is back on (weird issue with a plug in my nephew's room...). It's weird going back to a smaller screen (32ish inches), but my TV is WAY sharper!

Edit: Oh my Thor, I'm what a difference a TV makes! Not only the graphics, but also the gameplay is much smoother. I find that I'm better at parrying. The other TV must have input lag issues.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Falcon Critical » Wed Nov 20, 2019 2:44 am

So there was a leak that turned into an announcement (of an upcoming announcement) that Half Life: Alyx is coming. It's a three part VR release, but many (including myself) are thinking that Valve actually announcing a game with a press conference means this could be a big deal.

Just how big of a deal you ask? I present to you the E3 showcase and first view of the Source Engine, back in 2003. It's mind-blowing to watch the first five and a half minutes, while reflecting on the things they point out as new tech which is now standard across the industry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ddJ1OKV63Q

I (like many) hope that what Valve has in store isn't just VR done great. I want to see some new technology that makes people go "OH SHIT!" and ripples out across the industry. Does Valve still have that kind of talent? It's hard to say, their last proper game release (Portal 2) was great so I hope so.

The press conference is on Thursday this week, I really hope it's not just something like "hey here's Half Life 3, it's really cool in VR and will sell you on a Steam controller".

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Delthazar » Wed Nov 20, 2019 7:26 am

I'd love to think they absolutely still have that talent, and more, considering they've been out there acquiring folks like Campo Santo these past few years. I'm not sure why they'd bother doing that if not to get back in the gamedev scene, on crazy new tech or not.

Still, a new Half Life thing after 12 years is wild and should hopefully be more than just a VR prequel, as we understand most VR games to be at the moment: mostly awkward wave shooters with even more awkward teleports. It's hard to imagine Valve descending from the throne of Steam cash just to make another one of those.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Falcon Critical » Wed Nov 20, 2019 12:34 pm

I certainly hope that after years and years of just being "those Steam people" they can come back with something to wow me and make me say I'm a Valve fan.

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Re: [Game News] + General Gamesy Chatter

Post by Delthazar » Wed Nov 20, 2019 1:09 pm

Possibly related: there's been some rumours about Campo Santo's In The Valley getting canned, which is super disappointing. If their whole team got moved off that (which was underway prior to Valve's acquisition) and moved onto Half Life Alyx or whatever else then I really hope it's worth it. Otherwise they will have killed or stalled something really cool looking for nothing.

I wonder how many of the old Valve gamedev folks are still there. I guess Artifact is their most recent thing, and DOTA 2 will never die, so maybe that's where everyone has been all these years since... Left 4 Dead 2, or whatever their last big thing was.