Piston Hyundai
Member
saints row 2, you guys
saints row 2
saints row 2
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Giant Bomb #13 | good and faithful friends ahead
- Thread starter Jimmyfenix
- Start date
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If you haven't picked it up yet, Cook Serve Delicious is part of the Humble Weekly Bundle for the next few days.
You probably remember it from this great Ryan / Jeff quick look.
And, this.
You probably remember it from this great Ryan / Jeff quick look.
And, this.
BreezyLimbo
Banned
guys I'm starting to like destiny alot again
brad you should play
brad you should play
skLaFarebear
Member
Him and Jeff are too busy loving Bloodborne like cool people.
Incandenza
Banned
You got moxie.
Nope. Brad, CrispyLovesYou, cyborgMatt and Pascual need to start streaming DOTA2 again. Fuck destiny, fuck Axiom Verge and fuck Bloodborne (
Forgive me Jimmy
Freedom = $1.05
Banned
This is what happens when you guys don't talk weekend stuff during the weekend
nckillthegrimace
Member
I will make a separate post for why No More Heroes is the best. This post is about why Fallout: New Vegas is not so good.
I have a great respect for Obsidian's writing and design work, but, unfortunately, Fallout: New Vegas sees that talent shackled to Bethesda's pathetic world setting and subpar gameplay systems. Instead of the complex, morally gray problems addressed in games like Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic II, New Vegas decays into faction based decision making, simply allowing the player to choose a preferred ideology and cruise to the end of the game without self-reflecting. And no, Ron Perlman saying a thing happened doesn't count.
It also fails on a gameplay level. As is typical of these Bethesda published games, there's a lot to do, and the player has a lot of freedom to do whatever they want. Unfortunately, the poor core gameplay guarantees that even the more interesting quests are an obnoxious experience. The VATS system guarantees that combat degenerates into spraying bullets wildly/fleeing until your bar recharges enough to get in a slow-mo, critical hit. That sounds almost as fun as wandering aimlessly through a desert hoping something fun will happen, which is the rest of the game.
Still better than Fallout 3!
Keyser Soze
Member
BreezyLimbo
Banned
nonsense they need to start up league of legends the best dota around
TheMrPliskin
Member
saints row 2, you guys
saints row 2
I'll back you, Saints row 2 is a hell of a game.
ThreePiMatt
Member
Infinite Crisis came out on Steam not too long ago, they should at least do a QL of that if people need a MOBA fix.
No one cares about your baby game for babies.
You have the correct opinion.
EmCeeGramr
Member
Boy I hope they do another video of the next raid
it'll never happen.
I still need to finish the Expansion 1 quests. I was holding off until I could finish them at a higher difficulty, but that's never going to happen. Might as well get to it.
BreezyLimbo
Banned
no its not for babies its for real people
I can't wait to see jeff be grumpy in it
you gotta believe
skLaFarebear
Member
I should finish that Glass Vault Breaking Brad video.
But man, watching Drew and Dan play MGS is so much fun.
But man, watching Drew and Dan play MGS is so much fun.
Bloodborne came out just as I was falling off of Destiny, thankfully. I still enjoy it but I probably won't get back to it until the House of Wolves DLC. I have pretty much all of the loot I want and enough materials to last me a lifetime it feels like. I do like some of the changes the next patch is bringing though. I'd love to see them raid again but that isn't going to happen.
It absolutely baffles me that people are still playing Destiny. Like, what are you doing? There's a guy on my friends list who is always playing the game to this day and it blows my mind. I was done with that game after a week.
skLaFarebear
Member
I'm probably gonna wait till all the DLC is out and packaged into a GOTY edition for like 20 dollars.
Or just wait for the sequel which should be better.
Should.
Jeevesmeister
Banned
There was a Destiny thread a while back about a kid getting his characters deleted where a bunch of die hard Destiny fans said this was the worst thing ever and this guy should die and go to jail and burn in hell forever because glitching is apparently just part of the "grind" and they went on and on making it sound like the worst game in the entire world.
Piston Hyundai
Member
Well, shit, I hate to say "you're playing it wrong," but the way to play New Vegas is on Hardcore and without V.A.T.S., and maybe bump the difficulty up for good measure. Hardcore makes it so that a lot of items that you would scoff at (purified water, alcohol, junk food, etc) have much greater importance, which in turn makes exploration feel much more fruitful. At higher difficulties, the DT of yourself and your enemies is much more of a factor since you dish out far less damage (half of the normal damage if you're on Very Hard) and take even more, leading to a increased strategic focus on the combat, factoring in the different ammo types, armor, and status effects. Hell, even with V.A.T.S., enemies can light you the fuck up since the ridiculous damage negation from Fallout 3 is gone. You could totally Paralyzing Palm and/or V.A.T.S. your way to victory on the easier difficulties, but you'd be getting a lesser experience from it.
I totally agree with the faction system weakening the narrative, though, especially considering that many of the games of the time were taking the same route for their stories. That said, I really doubt that there's a single ending that one person could get where they'd be happy with everything that happened to each person or settlement (in other words: how the fuck doesn't Ron Perlman saying a thing happened count you son of a bitch etc).
Grinding the same shit, using it as a chatroom, pvp if you enjoy that aspect of it. Would be my guess.
Catching up on today's content. Two enjoyable QLs and a really good Danswers. What I like to see.
Piston Hyundai
Member
Destiny's combat feels pretty damn good. If there was a much better framework for that combat to flourish in, it'd totally be GotY material.
Basically, what Jeff said.
Basically, what Jeff said.
skLaFarebear
Member
I have so many podcasts to catch up on its making my head spin.
Annoying how I have to download the premium ones and manually put them on itunes in order to listen to them on my phone without wasting data, but its worth it to heard that Rustling/Danswers goodness.
Don't need to do that. Use a podcast app (or maybe you can do this in itunes too?) and just use this url: https://username:password@www.giantbomb.com/podcast-xml/premium/ (obviously with your username and password). You can download the podcast while on wi-fi and listen to it without wasting data.
edit: Not sure how to add the full url here it seems, it's the one in this Reddit post.
Yep. Destiny 2 could be something really great if Bungie makes the right improvements. The gunplay is top notch, they just need to work on everything else.
Owlowiscious
Member
Yo, I'm interested in Persona 4. How should I experience it?
-P4 PS2
-P4G Vita
-Giantbomb Endurance Run
-P4G Anime
-(Other)
-P4 PS2
-P4G Vita
-Giantbomb Endurance Run
-P4G Anime
-(Other)
TharpDaddy
Member
for pocketcasts on Android I needed to change it to https://username:password@auth.giantbomb.com/podcast-xml/premium
without the auth it wasn't working for me.
Twin Tails
Member
P4G
Real Definitive Version of the game
You should watch the endurance run even after playing it
P4 Anime is garbage no watch
Really untrue I think. Not only does the game propose ideological complexity (at least, for an Obsidian video game), it gives you the ability to make more complicated choices regarding those factions (or abstain from them entirely). It gives you the ability to follow their orders like a good little lapdog, or to immediately oppose them, or to play along and betray them at a strategic moment, or to simply go to work for yourself.
Few Obsidian games, let alone games in general, give you that sort of narrative freedom when dealing with major characters and factions to actually carry out these decisions. And even fewer will give you the opportunity to, say, resolve a game's final fight with dialogue and negotiation, rather than combat.
Taking your example of KOTOR II, whilst characters may have interesting perspectives, your ability to navigate those perspectives is inherently limited. The game, for the most part, is pretty structured around making sure you follow it in a certain order (with some non-linear stuff in the middle, letting you choose the order of planets you visit to find the Jedi Masters), and takes rather binary responses to most challenges you face, even if those binaries are dressed up very well with the writing (and they often are; Obsidian as you mention are really good at this).
I can murder the Jedi Council Masters the moment I find them, or I can gather them on Dantooine and wait for Kreia to do it for me, but the result is rather pre-ordained regardless of whether I follow the Light/Dark side paths. Similarly Kreia will always manipulate me in the same way, leading to the final conclusion, whether I agree with her philosophy unreservedly or oppose her at every turn.
Of course, Fallout New Vegas does have its narrative structures too, but they're both less frequent, and when the occur, less constraining. You can, in fact, head straight to Vegas at the beginning of the game should you figure out how to evade the Deathclaws. You can, in fact, work towards your goal in almost any order once you reach Vegas. Hell, not only are there multiple endings, there are multiple 'final battles', which differ from each other significantly.
skLaFarebear
Member
Got to figure out how to get this to work with the podcast app, but thanks for the help! Didn't even know this existed until now.
It should work in any of the bigger podcast apps and is easy to use (they all have a search function, that's where you search for the url). I forgot about what Tharp added, that's needed for a few apps.
stump sock
Member
it's fine...
they did the best they could w/r/t having to trim it way down and compress the storyline
I dunno. it's where I go when I don't feel like putting another 50 hours into the game
skLaFarebear
Member
It was about time I switched to a better podcast app anyway. Got it working with podcruncher.
skLaFarebear
Member
Play the game. P4 or P4G. Though I didn't care much for the P4G content (I didn't care for the game in general either).
Endurance run is probably great but I haven't seen it yet.
nckillthegrimace
Member
Why No More Heroes is the Best Game of Last Generation
Contrary to the flashy excess of its presentation, No More Heroes is a game designed around restraint, and this manifests in every aspect of the game. Instead of marring every Beam Katana attack with a Wii remote swing, NMH reserves physical movement for its killing blows, punctuating a lethal combo with a satisfying wrist flick and fountains of blood. Despite the thrill of combat being the game's strength, stages actually grow shorter as the game progresses because, yes, the game knows that you know how to kill faceless thugs.
Reviewers and players alike hold NMH's empty overworld and meaningless part-time job missions against the game, but they're missing the point. Aside from serving as a criticism of the vapid, all you can eat buffet nature of missions in open-world games (many of which review incredibly well because of that design), these breaks in the action allow the game to further highlight its spectacular boss fights: You need to put in some work before you get to have fun. The game actually imposes its ethos of restraint directly on the player, and I think that makes those bosses all the more memorable.
When they're made right, games designed around boss fights tend to be pretty awesome, and NMH lives up to that reputation. NMH begins with protagonist Travis Touchdown tasked with eliminating the top 10 ranked assassins in his hometown of Santa Destroy. After eliminating rank 10, Death Metal, Traviss ulterior motive is revealed: his handler, Sylvia, will sleep with him if he emerges as the number one ranked assassin. Traviss obvious issues with women permeate the entire game, but not just on a narrative level. The female bosses are actually considerably more difficult to take down than their male counterparts, and Traviss interactions with these bosses feed into a sort of a meta-narrative about his triumph over his childish views on women.
His rebirth as the number one assassin tracks alongside a sort of twisted coming-of-age story, which is quite the feat for a character in his late twenties, but I guess thats fairly typical for persons so steeped in the conspicuous consumption of nerd culture. I bet you didn't think the game where the guy salaciously utters "moe" at a loli poster and poops to save was actually a secret art game, did you?
Also, the game has wrestling and anime, so it fits in perfectly with this thread. Any questions?
Contrary to the flashy excess of its presentation, No More Heroes is a game designed around restraint, and this manifests in every aspect of the game. Instead of marring every Beam Katana attack with a Wii remote swing, NMH reserves physical movement for its killing blows, punctuating a lethal combo with a satisfying wrist flick and fountains of blood. Despite the thrill of combat being the game's strength, stages actually grow shorter as the game progresses because, yes, the game knows that you know how to kill faceless thugs.
Reviewers and players alike hold NMH's empty overworld and meaningless part-time job missions against the game, but they're missing the point. Aside from serving as a criticism of the vapid, all you can eat buffet nature of missions in open-world games (many of which review incredibly well because of that design), these breaks in the action allow the game to further highlight its spectacular boss fights: You need to put in some work before you get to have fun. The game actually imposes its ethos of restraint directly on the player, and I think that makes those bosses all the more memorable.
When they're made right, games designed around boss fights tend to be pretty awesome, and NMH lives up to that reputation. NMH begins with protagonist Travis Touchdown tasked with eliminating the top 10 ranked assassins in his hometown of Santa Destroy. After eliminating rank 10, Death Metal, Traviss ulterior motive is revealed: his handler, Sylvia, will sleep with him if he emerges as the number one ranked assassin. Traviss obvious issues with women permeate the entire game, but not just on a narrative level. The female bosses are actually considerably more difficult to take down than their male counterparts, and Traviss interactions with these bosses feed into a sort of a meta-narrative about his triumph over his childish views on women.
Travis hurts the first girl hes with (Rank 8, Shinobu), but doesnt go in for the kill, metaphorically and literally, since he spares her after chopping off her hand. He falls hopelessly in love with the next girl (Rank 6, Holly Summers), but she breaks it off by blowing her own head off with a grenade after he demonstrates his naiveté and inexperience. He finally figures out whats going on after an extended break when hes with an older woman (Rank 3, Speed Buster), who he expertly beheads after some gentle encouragement. Fancying himself an expert, Travis immediately goes after a bad girl (Rank 2, Bad Girl), who nearly outlasts him and only lets off when he admits hes bitten off more than he can chew. Finally, he learns to let go of the woman hes been secretly obsessed with the entire game (Jeane) as well as the woman hes been openly obsessed with the entire game (Sylvia).
Also, the game has wrestling and anime, so it fits in perfectly with this thread. Any questions?
P4G. The PS2 version is in second, then the endurance run in third. But P4G is the best way to experience P4 by far.
skLaFarebear
Member
Great post. I adore the narrative of NMH1 and felt that narrative was lacking 2 and was all over the place, which is part of the reason I like 1 more. Its imperfections are part of the reason I love it as much as I do.
ratcliffja
Member
No More Heroes was a boring open world game and a terrible follow-up to Killer 7.
I liked No More Heroes a lot, but the thing about making a large chunk of your game terrible in "satire" of other games is that you still made a large chunk of your game terrible and proved that those other games do things very well that you weren't capable of. Nobody came out of No More Heroes thinking that other open worlds are bad, they came out of it wishing they'd played the good open worlds instead during those portions.
nckillthegrimace
Member
It's a cool game that strikes the perfect balance between Suda's early, more philosophical stuff and the new, wacky stuff that he doesn't actually make but has his name on anyway
skLaFarebear
Member
I came out of it thinking the open world is as boring as most other open world games. But it did enough in other aspects that most games don't, that I really respected and had fun with.
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