The Video Game Thread: What are you Playing?

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I love the books, but they're surprisingly different from the games. It depends on the aspect as to which I prefer. Ciri and the Emperor are better in the games, the Elven characters are better in the books etc
 
Baulderstone said:
Shadowrun kind of annoys me in the way it completely misses the point more than most post-Gibson cyberpunk. Not that I can't still play and enjoy it, but its the kind of thing I need to get off my chest before doing so. I can play and enjoy game even if it is lacking in proper literary cred.
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I hear you, and I understand how Shadowrun's premise of working as an expendable mercenary who does corporate dirty work might run counter the spirit of cyberpunk (though I might argue that the Sudden But Inevitable Mr. Johnson Betrayal trope sort of "restores the balance" by driving home that corps suck, and supplements like Neo-Anarchist's Guide to Real Life flirt with a less formulaic sort of game that brushes up on actually feeling cyberpunk in more than name... but I digress).

Baulderstone said:
As for steampunk, Gibson gets no credit for that. The seminal work in cyberpunk was K.W. Jeter's Morlock Nights in 1979, and by 1984, the year Neuromancer came out, Jeter had another steampunk book out with Dr. Adder, and James Blaylock was getting in on the action with The Digging Leviathan. Of course, the term steampunk was a joking play on the term cyberpunk by those authors that was applied retroactively, but even then, it's not like Gibson even coined the term cyberpunk.
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I stand corrected. I thought The Difference Engine was mark zero for steampunk.

Paragon said:
I think there's some critique that can be landed on cyberpunk derivatives that ignore the fact that the kind of situation that breeds its characters is a tragedy, and supposed to be viewed as such (this is legitimately aimed at steampunk too, which can easily slip into valorizing the Victorian mindset), but not realizing that when you're influential some, maybe most branches off of what you've done are going to go in directions you wouldn't and might not like, is Curmudgeony Old Man 101 (and since I'm a Curmudgeony Old Man I know it when I see it).
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Yes, of course. And 40K's Imperium of Man were meant to be antagonists in original Rogue Trader (hell, they seem to have been largely cribbed from the bad guys in AD200's Nemesis The Warlock). And then the fandom goes and trips all over itself. Of course, GW being a business, they made lemonade out of those lemons, but I can see how a more artistically inclined auteur might take umbrage.
 
Ghost Whistler said:
What's wrong with the combat/interactions?
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Combat is far too easy. I can face tank and button mash encounters with my fists or shotgun: It’s a common issue in games that claim all plays styles are valid but it’s particularly bad in this case.

The UI is unnecessarily complicated. and unintuitive. I often find myself searching for the right angle when approaching objects to interact with. The map pathing is sometimes nonsensical especially for anything above or below ground level.

It is a testament to the game’s excellent atmosphere and storytelling that I can overlook these annoyances. The quests and characters are really top notch.
 
By the time my copy turns up from Bezos Inc it will be 2077.

Perhaps there's an alternate reality where Jeff Bezos isn't a massive money grubbing cunt of supervillain proportions willing, during pandemics, to invest and improved infrastructure and not treat his staff like shit
 
The Butcher said:
I hear you, and I understand how Shadowrun's premise of working as an expendable mercenary who does corporate dirty work might run counter the spirit of cyberpunk (though I might argue that the Sudden But Inevitable Mr. Johnson Betrayal trope sort of "restores the balance" by driving home that corps suck, and supplements like Neo-Anarchist's Guide to Real Life flirt with a less formulaic sort of game that brushes up on actually feeling cyberpunk in more than name... but I digress).
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Oh, I'm nerdier in my objections than that. One of things I liked about Gibson's work is the way it portrayed technology as an attempt to manufacture a kind of transcendence out of technology. Having, not just magic, but magic with an astral realm just sucks all the life out of that, along with the way it uses the trope of technology and magic as opposing forces.
Ghost Whistler said:
Perhaps there's an alternate reality where Jeff Bezos isn't a massive money grubbing cunt of supervillain proportions willing, during pandemics, to invest and improved infrastructure and not treat his staff like shit
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The guy is just really serious about cyberpunk LARPing.
 
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So the game arrived, and now I can't even play the game without downloading a fucking 40gb patch. There's no option at all
 
More CP 2077 annoyances include double tapping A or D to dodge instead of thwacking the space bar like every other fucking game in the universe. And you can't rebind. No instructions on how to holster your weapon, I stumbled upon it by accident (ALT opens up a weapon wheel and holstering/no weapon is an option). Stealth is just a mess and difficult to figure out; honestly there is little point to stealth in most cases because combat is so easy. There are a ton of weird little annoyances that aren't bugs just poor design. Before anyone thinks I am a hater, I got one hour of sleep last night because I was playing the game so obviously I had a lot of fun with it. Just while I am working I am remembering all the annoyances; my friend and I were on voice chat sharing our experiences as we played and most of it was either "X is awesome!" or "OMG X feature sucks so hard"


Ghost Whistler said:
So the game arrived, and now I can't even play the game without downloading a fucking 40gb patch. There's no option at all
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A big patch soon after release is pretty normal.
 
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Ghost Whistler said:
So the game arrived, and now I can't even play the game without downloading a fucking 40gb patch. There's no option at all
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Day one patches are pretty normal, granted it's on the large side but that's not unsurprising considered how worked to the bone the dev team is. There are a lot of issues to fix in a game that is underbaked...
 
Ghost Whistler said:
So the game arrived, and now I can't even play the game without downloading a fucking 40gb patch. There's no option at all
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GOG had a smaller one than steam for some reason, but I think taht was the 5G patch

Brock Savage said:
No instructions on how to holster your weapon
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It shows up during the first mission with jackie to get the lady out

Brock Savage said:
honestly there is little point to stealth in most cases because combat is so easy
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Hard is supposed to kick it up a bunch

Brock Savage said:
Before anyone thinks I am a hater, I got one hour of sleep last night because I was playing the game so obviously I had a lot of fun with it.
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lol, i only got in an hour last night and an hour this morning. I'm disappointed the soundtrack isn't released yet.
 
Raleel said:
It shows up during the first mission with jackie to get the lady out
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Seriously? Aw man that's good to know. The mission glitched out on me as soon as I brought her onto the balcony; I couldn't interact with any items until I closed and restarted.


Raleel said:
Hard is supposed to kick it up a bunch
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I am gonna kick it up to hard once I decide on a build. That said I suspect that, like Witcher 3, CP 2077 combat needs more "juice" than simply increasing the enemy HP and damage. If doods need 3 shotgun blasts to the face instead of 2 the fundamental problem of boring combat is still there.
 
For those folks running CP2077, what kind of video card do you have?
 
Hm. The M4000 my machine came with is a bit slower than the minimum recommended card on CDPR's web site, although it might run it OK. Still not really of a mind to buy a shiny new high-end gaming card, though. I think I might take a wait-and-see approach with CP2077 - let them sort the bugs out. Maybe I'll get a studlier video card next year once the dust settles on the 30x cards from NVidia.
 
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Baulderstone said:
I half agree. Gibson is often overly dismissive at the works he inspired. At the same time, Shadowrun kind of annoys me in the way it completely misses the point more than most post-Gibson cyberpunk. Not that I can't still play and enjoy it, but its the kind of thing I need to get off my chest before doing so. I can play and enjoy game even if it is lacking in proper literary cred.
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I get the feeling that folks missing the point is the thing that really upsets him; he wants to write stories about people and how they interact with technology, he's not really interested in the technology itself, but that's what he's been pigeonholed into. I also get the feeling he really doesn't like Young William Gibson much.

That said, I like Shadowrun, because I like the juxtaposition and the toolset that magic-users have forces you to make fun decisions; it's something you can't really get elsewhere, and you just have to accept that it's own thing.

Raleel said:
I went from ac odyssey to ac Valhalla to cp2077 in 2 months. I’m not done with any of it.
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Steam says I've played 20 hours of the Stabby Greek Lesbian game, and I've been to like... 5% of the map. And I'm not upset! I've had a lot of fun in those 20 hours! But by Zeus, did we really need that much game? With that many ideas in it? It's just exhausting to think about doing all of it, or going back to it after a break, let alone the amount of work that went into it to just never be used again. Sometimes you really can have too much of a good thing.
 
Ladybird said:
I get the feeling that folks missing the point is the thing that really upsets him; he wants to write stories about people and how they interact with technology, he's not really interested in the technology itself, but that's what he's been pigeonholed into. I also get the feeling he really doesn't like Young William Gibson much.

That said, I like Shadowrun, because I like the juxtaposition and the toolset that magic-users have forces you to make fun decisions; it's something you can't really get elsewhere, and you just have to accept that it's own thing.
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Like I said, I can still enjoy Shadowrun. I just have a compulsion to state my criticisms before getting down to just having fun.

Steam says I've played 20 hours of the Stabby Greek Lesbian game, and I've been to like... 5% of the map. And I'm not upset! I've had a lot of fun in those 20 hours! But by Zeus, did we really need that much game? With that many ideas in it? It's just exhausting to think about doing all of it, or going back to it after a break, let alone the amount of work that went into it to just never be used again. Sometimes you really can have too much of a good thing.
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I've abandoned completism when it comes to video games. I keep playing it while I'm enjoying it, then I just drift away, guilt-free, when I get bored.
 
GTX 1070.

I'll be dropping it when I eventually get a 3080. If anyone's interested in my 1070 when that happens, I'd be happy to sell it. I also have an i7-4970k for sale, too.
 
I understand that patching has become normalised but this is a ridiculoyus situation. I expected a patch, I figured I could play while it downloaded.

Anyway, that happened and I've played for about an hour. Seems stable so far. Some of the visuals are washed out and trippy looking and sometimes the fps takes dive. Whether my experience reaches the dizzy lows that some are reporting remains to be seen. Hopefully not obviously. But if it falls aprt, that's too bad
 
Ladybird said:
I get the feeling that folks missing the point is the thing that really upsets him; he wants to write stories about people and how they interact with technology, he's not really interested in the technology itself, but that's what he's been pigeonholed into. I also get the feeling he really doesn't like Young William Gibson much.
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He does come off as a grumpy old man these days.
 
Baulderstone said:
Well, he is 72 now, which has to be a rough age for someone whose claim to fame is being the hip, young maverick of science fiction. He was already 36 when he wrote Neuromancer.
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I follow him on twitter and he seems subdued and mainly just fires off a few "take a look at this" type re-tweets.

I started the intro and tutorial for CP2077 on xbox one. So far so good. But I'm getting a "Strange Days" vibe from it more than anything else.
 
Ghost Whistler said:
I understand that patching has become normalised but this is a ridiculoyus situation. I expected a patch, I figured I could play while it downloaded.
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Imagine the kicking this game would be getting if it had came out a month ago.

Nobby-W said:
I feel there's a Southpark meme that might go here ...
Give me six lines by the most honest of men and I will find double entendre in it - Cardinal Richlieu, maybe.
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:grin:

I think it's an important thing about open-world games, though; the core thing you do in any game needs to be entertaining, and in an open-world game, that's hanging out with the main character and their allies. Everything else can be looser, but if the player doesn't enjoy the time spent with the main characters, the game is going to fail.

One of my favourite games is Saint's Row: the Third, and objectively it's lacking in a lot of ways; the open world feels particularly illusionary, you can practically see where they ran out of time and money (In retrospect, did they really need to hire Hulk Hogan to voice a side character?), some of the subsystems are quite grindy, and it's kinda limited in content. But what brings it all together is that the Saints are just fun. They're the sort of friends that are awful people, and you know it, but you hang out with them anyway because they're always a good time.

Baulderstone said:
Well, he is 72 now, which has to be a rough age for someone whose claim to fame is being the hip, young maverick of science fiction. He was already 36 when he wrote Neuromancer.
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Personally I think his books have just got better and better, probably peaking with the Bigend trilogy.
 
I did tuning of the graphics things. Lizzy’s bar was murder on the frame rate.. other than that it’s going well. I have had to stop at a couple points due to some feelings of anxiety. Sort of a “this is too heavy” feel. I think it is partially related to how busy the environment is. A lot of lights and a lot of noises.


backgrounds give you more options when talking, which is fun, but not all that critical I imagine. A story element to be sure. I didn’t like that it had you pick stats 45 minutes before combat had been taught, but so be it. I don’t like that the take down animation is so limited. There is one that I’ve seen. After playing two different assassins creeds in the last two months, that’s disappointing.

gun play isn’t bad, though it’s not quite as fluid as an FPS. It does have good cover mechanics, including cocking s fun s bit to the side when you get it just right popping out from behind cover. Makes it quite possible to not get hit.

there feels like a bit of asymmetric gunplay action - deadly for you, not for them. I can headshot guys half a dozen times with a pistol and they don’t go down. It’s not quite as nice to you. I’ve been a little driven by the anxiety to pay attention very close, but there is that feeling still.

the ui is... muted? Because the environment is pretty busy, snd they chose the style to be close to everything else, it can be a bit hard to read. The yellow for the quests isn’t quite as bright as I’d like. I regularly miss messages (a quest giving mechanic) that pop up on your persona headwear cellphone because the rest of the environment is sort of nuts.

the story is pretty good so far. It feels cyberpunk, for sure. I’m playing a corpo, and that feels about right. The wealth disparity and so on. Some of the people in the seedy underbelly are very good looking for struggling to get by. Your character, on the other hand, has lots of options and it’s hard to get one that looks really good.

more as I play more, but I probably won’t much today. I am GMing tonight and I need to be focused there.
 
Ghost Whistler said:
I understand that patching has become normalised but this is a ridiculoyus situation. I expected a patch, I figured I could play while it downloaded.
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Unless a game is specifically setup to have chunk install, where there is a section that can be played and is independent from the rest of the game (as it installs) then what you're talking about isn't really a norm in game development, at least from my experience with regards to patching a product. You can't be playing something when the infrastructure of the game is being touched up.

It's like asking to drive a new car when they stop you, to put air back in the deflated tires. You could drive away deflated (aka disconnect from the internet to avoid the patch) and have a crappy time that they don't want you to have, or you could wait. :tongue:
 
I want to thank everyone on here, who has paid for the privilege to be betatesters for Cyberpunk 2077. You are ensuring me a polished experience, once I buy it on a sale sometime next year.

I have played a first-person shooter rythm game called BPM (Bullets Per Minute). It's a rogue-lite style game, so there really isn't a final ending to the game, but I have played around 50 hours now and think I have gotten my fill. The only thing that bothered me about the game, was the color choice. It has a very red color philter on some levels, that made it hard to see what was going on. Luckily there is a graphic option to tone it down. There is also a non-rythm mode for those of you without any sense of rythm.

Now I have decided to start playing the old Star Wars: TOR again. Have downloaded it from Steam and paid for a non-recurring three month subscription, because it's too annoying to play for free. Have never played any of the Empire story lines, so has started an Imperial Agent playthrough. Once that's done, I'll probably play the Bounty Hunter one. Not interested in any of the Sith storylines.
 
And another patch, this one is 17gb. Seems you can still play while this is downloading.

I'm done with this industry. I've been wanting to play this for a long time so I'm ok to comit to this purchase, but given the rotten state of this broken overpriced industry and its many shortcomings and dreadful business practices I don't see myself upgrading and I don't see anything else worth purchasing either. What a fucking joke this is
 
Kabuki market didn't like me searching for the cop, my game crashed3 times in half an hour.
 
Ghost Whistler said:
And another patch, this one is 17gb. Seems you can still play while this is downloading.

I'm done with this industry. I've been wanting to play this for a long time so I'm ok to comit to this purchase, but given the rotten state of this broken overpriced industry and its many shortcomings and dreadful business practices I don't see myself upgrading and I don't see anything else worth purchasing either. What a fucking joke this is
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There's still good stuff out there, it's just not in the AAA market. Look at something like Hades - easily one of the most creative and art-stuffed games in recent years, produced by a developer with an aggressively anti-crunch policy.
 
For anyone trying to optimize their character in Cyberpunk 2077 for Hard mode or whatever I find it advantageous to grind skills outside of your preferred playstyle to earn desirable perks. For instance even though my build uses fists it was still advantageous for me to get use a katana for a couple missions to reach Blades 4 and qualify for the Slow and Steady perk. Tonight I am working on Engineering (using tech guns) just so I can get the Shrapnel and Blade Runner perks. All you have to do to earn perks is raise the relevant stat to a high enough level. Skill level doesn't matter.

There are some skills that seem to advance at a snail's pace like Athletics and Stealth so if anyone knows how to grind those skills faster lemme know.

Séadna said:
Yeah just look outside the AAA games and you'll have loads to entertain you. See Disco Elysium for a great recent CRPG.
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Disco Elysium was an decent game even with its obvious political bias. In fact if I recall correctly the only player choices were moderate left wing, far left wing, Communist, and fascist LOL.
 
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I'm not bothered about other games. I'm sure there are many fine games out there. But the ball ache of modern gaming is just too onerous and expensive. When I picked up my xbox in the summer i wanted to try Gears 5. Took 3 days before I could play it because of how the XB installs and updates games simultaneously. So without a fibre broadband connection (I don't have) it takes days. This is now the norm. I fully expected 2077 to be just the same, but at least on ps4 it's normally the case you can play while it's patching (assuming stability). It's just tedious for £50 titles. The whole thing is getting worse each year. How many more patches will be required?
 
I don't think I'll be upgrading my video card just yet ...
 
Brock Savage said:
Disco Elysium was an decent game even with its obvious political bias. In fact if I recall correctly the only player choices were moderate left wing, far left wing, Communist, and fascist LOL.
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Certainly. The alignments were communism, fascism, moralism and ultraliberalism.

It's made by a Karelian-Lithuianian so a lot of the stuff is filtered through the politics of the Post-Soviet Eastern bloc and stuff like Soviet treatment of minor ethnic groups. Quite complex as the Soviets were in some ways more supportive of their minor groups than other super states, e.g. orthography research for minority languages, which relates to the creator being part Karelian. There's also the stuff about the scientific materialist aspect of Communism. I was familiar with the latter part as it had a major effect on physics* during the Cold War period. Facism in the game is basically European style nationalism. Well sort of, the notions are a bit different in Eastern and Western Europe.

So it's certainly from the perspective of a post-Soviet socialist. These two posts from Reddit are a good brief explanation:

This isn't meant to be political itself, just to give context to the game.

Post 1:
The important think to remember is that this comes from post-soviet left wing people, for whom wrestling with the legacy of the soviet union and how it failed to live up to its principles is of central importance. (I'm guessing, I wasn't there!)
The "people's pile" is there to reflect Chernobyl, but (along with the treatment of FELD) also the often clumsy relationship between "scientific materialism" and actual materialistic scientific research, Evrart represents careerist communist party members, as well as being an ironic archetype of a fatcat boss.
How does one rescue the intentions of communism from it's blind excesses, and the tendencies of it's leaders to take it's control processes for their own personal gain?
"The evil that men do is remembered after their deaths, but the good is often buried with them."

Post 2:
As a socialist from a post-soviet country, I believe you hit the nail on the head. I really identified with the game and the theoretical struggle depicted. The Moralintern reminded me a lot of the centrist parties of the country I grew up in - trying to make the society better but never taking any real measures to not sound like the Soviets. You end in the situation similar to Revanchol. You're too late to become a first-world capitalist country but there no real measures against the poverty and misery since communism is bad.

*The effect known as decoherence was discovered in an attempt to defend the scientific materialist aspects of Leninism.
 
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