What are you currently playing?

[TheMightyEthan]

Mass Effect Legendary Edition

 

This game is such comfort food. The changes they've made to the first one are subtle enough that it still feels like you remember it, while not being nearly as clunky. I'm super impressed with how well it holds up. I can't wait to get to 2 and 3.

[TheMightyEthan]

Mass Effect 3 Legendary Edition

 

Hmm, apparently I forgot to share thoughts on Mass Effect 2 while I was playing.... Oh well. The fact that I basically 100%'d it in 38 hours over only 8 days should tell you all you need to know.

 

I'm about 8 hours into this one and it still seems like I'm right at the beginning. It's so good. Ending aside, I think this is my favorite game of the series. It really feels like there's stakes, and every place you visit feels like it's really being affected by the larger galactic civilization. I especially love how every single sidequest contributes to your galactic readiness, so even the random ass little "help this person" type things feel like they're feeding into your overall goal. It's really amazingly well done. I'll be interested to see how playing with the updated ending and being several years removed from the initial disappointment of the original ending affects my feelings about it.

[Thursday Next]

1 hour ago, TheMightyEthan said:

Mass Effect 3 Legendary Edition

disappointment of the original ending

 

I think people put too much emphasis on the last mission/cutscene as "the ending". The whole game is the ending of the trilogy. All of the companion story arcs are wrapped up nicely, the individual races have their arcs resolved, the galactic story comes together, and all of this is based on the millions of decision combinations one can make along the way.

 

The only bit I see people complain about is the "final choice", and if the final choice had been replaced by some hidden sum of your previous choices, people would have just complained that they didn't know that having Edi and Joker hook up was going to trigger the Synergy ending, or being a renegade would trigger the Destroy ending or whatever and why can't they just pick the "ending" that they want.

[TheMightyEthan]

20 minutes ago, Thursday Next said:

The only bit I see people complain about is the "final choice",

 

That's definitely not the only thing people complain about, though I know some people do. The choice thing doesn't even bother me, the end just felt so damned abrupt. Playing it the first time at launch it was like a punch in the gut. It'd be like if ME1 just did a hard cut to credits as soon as Sovereign was destroyed. You need to have that little bit of wrap-up showing the aftermath of what happened. The updated ending adds that, and I was reasonably satisfied with it at the time, but it was soon enough after the initial disappointment that it couldn't really wash that taste out of my mouth. I'm hoping now that there's a good bit of distance I'll just be completely satisfied with it.

[Thursday Next]

15 minutes ago, TheMightyEthan said:

 

That's definitely not the only thing people complain about, though I know some people do.

 

Fairy nuff. I have a personal axe to grind on this as I had the ending spoiled by having to deal with the Advertising Standards complaints before I got a chance to play through the final game myself. People complaining that there "were only three endings" when there are actually in excess of 6million end-state combinations.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, those people are tools.

[Thursday Next]

I think with all of these sorts of games, in an ideal world, I would love a "post-game" sort of thing where you can hoover up quests, collectibles, etc. and just sort of enjoy that you saved the world/galaxy/whatever. But I get that that is resource intensive and only like 10% of players even finish games so I see why it doesn't get done.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about, though it's nice when it's there. I just mean a cutscene or something that shows a little bit of the aftermath of what happened. Like the scene in ME1 after the final battle where they're digging through the wreckage and find the squad and then you have a short conversation with the council, or the short little conversation with the Illusive Man after the suicide mission in ME2. Just something to show the results of what happened, instead of a hard cut the instant the final confrontation is over, it doesn't have to let you go back out into the world. The original ME3 ending was like if Return of the King just cut to credits as soon as the Ring was destroyed (though RotK has the opposite problem of having way too much epilogue, but that's a whole separate issue).

 

I've heard other people say "if you like the first 95% of the game why does it matter?" and I don't really know how to explain it to someone like that, because that's just such an alien viewpoint to me. Like, in something so story-heavy, the end is the most important part, because it's the part your players are left with. You've gotta stick the landing, otherwise you've undone all the work you did getting players so invested in the first place. You can't just build tension up to its height and then cut it off, that's supremely unsatisfying, you have to have the release.

 

But like I said, they added those little vignettes with the end update for ME3, so I think now that I can play a full playthrough from the beginning with that updated ending already there, and without still having the disappointment of the original jarring hard cut ending fresh in my mind, I'll like it a lot more.

[toxicitizen]

1 hour ago, TheMightyEthan said:

I've heard other people say "if you like the first 95% of the game why does it matter?" and I don't really know how to explain it to someone like that, because that's just such an alien viewpoint to me. Like, in something so story-heavy, the end is the most important part, because it's the part your players are left with. You've gotta stick the landing, otherwise you've undone all the work you did getting players so invested in the first place.

 

I generally agree with the sentiment but I feel video games are a bit of a different beast here. Even in a story-heavy game like ME, gameplay is still the main method of engaging with the material. If the gameplay is good then I feel like you at least got something out of it that the ending can't possibly undo.

 

It's not like, say, Game of Thrones, where the story is the entire point and at the end you're just left wondering why you wasted your time on this shit lol.

[TheMightyEthan]

It depends on the game, like I'm not going to give a shit if Pokemon Snap's ending doesn't pay off, but if the reason I'm playing the game is the story then a bad ending hits me largely the same way it would in a book or a movie.

 

I mean, for Game of Thrones you could say the same thing, if you enjoyed watching all but the last few episodes then why does the bad ending matter?

 

*Edit - And I'm not saying even the original ending completely ruined the series, or even ruined ME3, I'm just saying that the ending has a disproportionate effect on your overall feelings about the game. So a bad ending will make you feel worse about the game overall than if there was something equally bad in the middle but the ending paid off. If the very last thing I feel about your game is disappointment that's going to color my memories of everything else. Same thing if the very last thing I feel is awe, or even just satisfaction.

[TheMightyEthan]

Still Mass Effect 3

 

I've realized that I never actually got the Omega or Leviathan DLCs back in the day, so those were completely new to me. I had thought that I'd played all the DLC for that game just like I had for the other two, but apparently I only got the Citadel DLC.

 

Both of these were really good, like Lair of the Shadow Broker level good. Omega does exactly what great DLC should, expand on a little bit of the world, and basically be a big ass side question. Leviathan though, they really shouldn't have locked behind DLC. It's super good, but it also puts the whole primary conflict with the Reapers in an entirely different light. I think the main game would have really benefited from this being included, it ties into stuff that happens later, and would have fixed some of the problems people had with it just kind of pulling the ending out of nowhere. Dumb decision then, but since it's included in the LE now all is well.

 

I'm actually really glad I never played these back in the day, because it let me recapture some of the feeling of playing these games for the very first time, and that's a wonderful thing.

[Thursday Next]

I'm in Age of Calamity Korok Hell. I hated that in BOTW there were so many stupid things to collect. 100s of korok nuts, temples, etc. all completely unlabelled. AoC has doubled down on this with 175 Korok seeds to collect, across all the campaign levels, many of which have time limits. Worst of all while chests (from what I can tell there is no overall reward for opening all the chests) are marked on the map (with an ability upgrade), the koroks are not. So I have to have a guide open because no fucking way am I tiptoeing through these levels trying to find that one bombable wall where a korok is hiding.

 

I was already sort of done with the game, but now (like BOTW) I am beginning to actively dislike it.

[TheMightyEthan]

If you've finished the game why are you bothering looking for the Koroks? I found like 3 of them in that whole game and didn't feel like I was missing out.

[Thursday Next]

Because I want to unlock all the things.

[TheMightyEthan]

But if you're not enjoying it...

[Thursday Next]

Who plays games for enjoyment?!?

[toxicitizen]

Wasn't really feeling Horizon so I put it aside for now, and on a whim decided it was time to jump back into FFXIV. And boy, did I pick the worst possible place to stop!

 

I played through the "A Realm Reborn" part of the story (the base game) about two years ago. Back then the free trial went up to level 35 IIRC and at that point I had to activate my free month. Well, it ran out just as I reached the end of the main scenario quest and I ended up not doing the very last dungeon. At the time I didn't feel like committing to another full month of playing the game so I decided to take a break and come back to it later.

 

Well, two years later I'm coming back to this and I don't remember anything about the story or even how to play my character. Thankfully, turns out they added a new game plus mode that allows you to replay the MSQ but you only unlock it once you've cleared that part of the story so... I needed to do that final dungeon and dungeons are these instanced mini-raids that you need to party up with other players for. It went surprisingly well, all things considered. But yeah, I had no idea wtf was happening or who any of the characters were. So the big ending to the story didn't quite land lol.

 

So I've been going through NG+ and they actually updated the MSQ to improve the new player experience and remove some of the filler since I last played, so it's going pretty fast. Especially since my level 50 character one-shots basically everything that isn't an instanced fight (your level scales down for those). Having access to a flying mount from the start (which I unlocked after clearing the final dungeon) also helps to cut down a LOT on travel time. I'm already about halfway through and it's pretty fun!

 

Can't wait to be done with NG+, though, so I can finally see what's so great about Heavensward and beyond. I'm rushing through NG+ but I'll probably slow down a bit after that so I don't get burned out on the game. Ideally I'll keep playing on and off and be caught up in time for Endwalker in November. I only have up to Stormblood though so I'll probably buy Shadowbringers in the Steam summer sale later this month.

[Mister Jack]

After playing around with Guilty Gear Strive a bit I feel like I have a better handle on it and I can see why the general public has taken to this game more than previous entries. The biggest change that is immediately noticeable to veterans like myself is that the gatling combo system has been completely overhauled. It used to be that a fairly reliable bread and butter combo for many characters was some variation of P>K>S>HS in order, sometimes with multiple inputs, for example P>P>d.K>d.S>d.HS just as an example. Well, in Strive you are hardly ever going to use P and K for combos because they don't chain into the other commands. P and K get more use for zoning or anti-air commands. Many combos are going to start simply with S>S and combos in general will have fewer hits. The highest combo count I've seen that didn't include things like supers that stack on a bunch of extra hits is maybe 14 hits, and that's from a top level player. The tradeoff for fewer hits is that each hit does more damage. A combo of only three or four hits is still going to take off a respectable chunk of the opponent's life bar.

 

The other systems have been overhauled as well. The dust button (R1 by default), which used to be used to launch air combos, is now pretty much your overhead attack button to bust out whenever people block low too much. You also use it for sweeps while crouching, but that was always the case. Roman cancels have gotten a complete overhaul. Red roman cancels, which cancel your recovery frames during a hit to let you instantly use another attack, are the same as they've always been, but the other kinds are totally different now. It used to be that if you wanted to use a blue/yellow roman cancel you had to bust it out during specific frames to cancel the animations of things like ranged attacks. This could be pretty difficult even for experienced players and I rarely saw it used during tournaments. In Strive, however, the frames don't really matter when it comes to roman cancels. Yellow roman cancels are now used while blocking, blues are used while neutral, and purples are used after whiffing an attack. Regardless of which color it comes out as, if it connects with your opponent then it will stun them and slow them down for about one second, giving you a brief but valuable opening to attack.

 

One other thing I like is the online system. I remember games like Street Fighter where everyone had to go up one rank at a time, which often meant getting stuck fighting against people way above your skill level because they just hadn't leveled up enough yet. In Strive, there are 10 different floors on the battle tower and if the game detects you're way above people in the beginner stages it'll automatically shoot you up to whatever floor it thinks you should be on. I think this is a way better approach than having to grind through ranks one by one. It also has rollback netcode, which works great for online matches.

 

I like the game, but if your focus is single player then be warned that this isn't like a Netherrealm game. It has arcade mode and a mission mode, but that's pretty much it, at least right now. Story mode is a non-interactive movie like it was in Xrd. Supposedly there's more content coming, but that's gonna be a while. If you want to try getting into fighting games but always found them too intimidating though, this is a good one to ease you into the genre.

[TheMightyEthan]

I went back to Returnal, after giving up on the platinum following 5 straight runs with not a single collectible appearing. Well, apparently the patches they pushed worked, because on my very first run I got the last collectible I needed for the first biome, and one of the last two I needed for the second (I already had everything from the third). Hopefully my luck holds.

 

Also, I expected myself to be really bad at this game having not played it for a few months, but no, I slipped right back in like I've been playing the whole time.

[Mister Jack]

I'm still trying to get that damn stone fragment in the sixth biome and I have no idea where to find it.

[TheMightyEthan]

I recommend looking it up, it's in a hidden area that won't show up on your map.

[Mister Jack]

I did look it up and that area wasn't there.

[TheMightyEthan]

You mean the room it was supposed to be in didn't spawn, or it spawned but the secret part wasn't there?

[Mister Jack]

The latter

[TheMightyEthan]

Weird.