What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims

[Rynjin]

Regarding Forspoken the issue is probably also the price. It's... rather steep, especially for a game that doesn't appear to be all that great.

Yeah. AAA developers, stop trying to make "$70 game" happen.

[Eldan]

Man. Over here, we just casually have 90$ games and we had them for 10 years now. Stupid expensive country.

[Zevox]

Re: Persona love interest - Persona games barely have something approximating a canon name for their main character. The idea of a canon love interest for them is pretty ridiculous.

So Forspoken got mixed enough reviews to be intriguing, and I felt like some magic to mix things up.

Glad to hear you're enjoying it. I've been looking forward to it, so I picked up my copy yesterday, but won't be getting to it for a while, since it has the misfortune of coming out four days after Fire Emblem, so it has to wait until I'm done with that.

Yeah. AAA developers, stop trying to make "$70 game" happen.

Eh, console games have been $60 by default for as long as I've been buying most of my games for myself - so, the better part of two decades, at least. I'm just surprised we went this long without a price increase, really.

[tonberrian]

I still remember the days when N64 games were $50 and gameboy games were $20. It still bothers me about the $10 hike in both those.

I feel so ancient.

[Gnoman]

$50 was a lot more money in the N64 days. Prices have been goings steadily down based on actual purchasing power.

[Anonymouswizard]

Re: Persona love interest - Persona games barely have something approximating a canon name for their main character. The idea of a canon love interest for them is pretty ridiculous.

THE P2 and P4 protagonists have canon names, and that's half of them. The protagonists also have relatively well designed personalities, I'm not overly familiar with the first three games, but the P3 protagonists are moody and spunky, each hiding the other trait, P4's is a silly closeted bisexual who latches onto literally anybody he can, and P5's seems to go between intentionally withdrawn and flamboyantly sarcastic depending on the scene (but then again I'm only just before the first Palace's throne room).

$50 was a lot more money in the N64 days. Prices have been goings steadily down based on actual purchasing power.

Speak for yourself. PS2 discs used to cost £30, now physical AAA games cost £60 (a roughly 20% increase in real terms) and downloads £50 (about what a physical game would have been). 'Games never raised in price' is a very American thing, here in the UK it's been an extra £10 every generation. Plus more DLC and microtransactions every time a company thinks they can get away with it.

I'd say Warhammer is cheaper, but GW price hikes are even more ridiculous (over £3 for a Guardsman!)

[Rynjin]

Eh, console games have been $60 by default for as long as I've been buying most of my games for myself - so, the better part of two decades, at least. I'm just surprised we went this long without a price increase, really.

We did get a price increase before now. Several, in fact. Microtransactions, season passes, battle passes, etc. "adding onto" games deliberately truncated to sell pieces to you later.

The games launching at $70 don't typically cut out those extra methods of monetization either, which make stheir price hike basically just naked greed.

[warty goblin]

I haven't looked, but I've seen no evidence of a cash shop of any kind in Forspoken.

[Sermil]

We did get a price increase before now. Several, in fact. Microtransactions, season passes, battle passes, etc. "adding onto" games deliberately truncated to sell pieces to you later.

The games launching at $70 don't typically cut out those extra methods of monetization either, which make stheir price hike basically just naked greed.

Or, you know, it takes hundreds of people working for years to make them, as opposed to older games with far fewer assets and systems. And they'd like to be paid enough to live on.

[Gnoman]

Speak for yourself. PS2 discs used to cost £30, now physical AAA games cost £60 (a roughly 20% increase in real terms) and downloads £50 (about what a physical game would have been). 'Games never raised in price' is a very American thing, here in the UK it's been an extra £10 every generation. Plus more DLC and microtransactions every time a company thinks they can get away with it.

£30 in 2003 is worth £60.69 today, meaning that the price has merely increased with the inflation rate.

[tonberrian]

To be fair $50 in 1995 money is roughly $97.13 in today money. Inflation is bad.

[Zevox]

THE P2 and P4 protagonists have canon names, and that's half of them. The protagonists also have relatively well designed personalities, I'm not overly familiar with the first three games, but the P3 protagonists are moody and spunky, each hiding the other trait, P4's is a silly closeted bisexual who latches onto literally anybody he can, and P5's seems to go between intentionally withdrawn and flamboyantly sarcastic depending on the scene (but then again I'm only just before the first Palace's throne room).

Sounds more like your impressions of the characters than anything. Most of which I don't share, personally. But on the name thing, can't speak to P1 or P2, but for 3-5 I do believe they all technically have canon names now. P3 is Makoto Yuki, P4 is Yu Narukami, and P5 is Ren Amimaya. It's just that Yu is the most well-known one due to Persona 4 Arena, while Ren basically doesn't matter due to everyone just calling him Joker anyway, and Makoto's name is unlikely to catch on since all of us were calling him Minato Arisato for years before they decided on that one. (Not sure if the P3 female protagonist got an official name, now that I think of it. I only know that some fans were calling her Minako as a feminine version of Minato.)

We did get a price increase before now. Several, in fact. Microtransactions, season passes, battle passes, etc. "adding onto" games deliberately truncated to sell pieces to you later.

The games launching at $70 don't typically cut out those extra methods of monetization either, which make stheir price hike basically just naked greed.

Barring free-to-play games, which are built around trying to get you to buy those (and I hate them for it), those are generally optional extras you can readily ignore. I know I personally only buy DLC for games that I'm already very happy with, because a quality core game lets me believe that the DLC will be worth my money. And even then not always, if the DLC is too pricey (I briefly considered picking up the Atlantis DLC for Assassin's Creed Odyssey, but the price quickly made me decide against it) or just not something I think is worth paying extra for (I love Persona 5, but can't imagine paying for the DLC costumes and personas it has; the core game isn't lacking plenty of personas, and I don't feel any need to dress up the new cast like the previous games' characters).

[Form]

Or, you know, it takes hundreds of people working for years to make them, as opposed to older games with far fewer assets and systems. And they'd like to be paid enough to live on.

I wouldn't mind the price increase if the money were to go the salaries of the devs and testers and other personnel of a company, but I'm not convinced that's where the money's actually going. Or that inflation is the sole reason for the price increase. From my perspective I'm seeing a mediocre game trying to make the jump from 60 euros to 80 euros and this is coming from an industry that is known for a variety of shady practices to make as much money as possible. By that I mean the lootboxes and other gambling mechanics the industry puts in games, the microtransactions, companies flirting with NFTs and their habit of overworking and underpaying their people.

I'd like to see the money go to the people on the ground floor who actually do the work, but I have my doubts that will be the case.

[Anonymouswizard]

Or, you know, it takes hundreds of people working for years to make them, as opposed to older games with far fewer assets and systems. And they'd like to be paid enough to live on.

I'd argue that nobody asked for games to be this hard to make, but considering I'm playing P5R. Although Atlus really isn't on the map when it comes to scumbag money making.

But hey, games are more expensive to make. Maybe companies should do the honest thing and charge more for them, instead of trying to swindle as much as possible out of a few victims.

£30 in 2003 is worth £60.69 today, meaning that the price has merely increased with the inflation rate.

And according to the BoE calculator I used £30 in 200 is worth £50.23. Probably not a perfect calculation, but you're nitpicking instead of addressing my point that elsewhere games have increased in price as well as having exploitative microtransactions shoved in to prey upon the vulnerable.

[Rynjin]

I wouldn't mind the price increase if the money were to go the salaries of the devs and testers and other personnel of a company, but I'm not convinced that's where the money's actually going. Or that inflation is the sole reason for the price increase. From my perspective I'm seeing a mediocre game trying to make the jump from 60 euros to 80 euros and this is coming from an industry that is known for a variety of shady practices to make as much money as possible. By that I mean the lootboxes and other gambling mechanics the industry puts in games, the microtransactions, companies flirting with NFTs and their habit of overworking and underpaying their people.

I'd like to see the money go to the people on the ground floor who actually do the work, but I have my doubts that will be the case.

Exactly. The game industry treats its workers like garbage and none of these additional profits have ever trickled down to the working masses that actually make the games.

[Cespenar]

I find indie games to be fairly good bets if you're worried about where your money goes on an purchase.

[Wookieetank]

I'm 100% off-line. Personally, I'd love to see an expansion of villagers... ones who live in underground, for example.

That would be neat. Wonder if you could dome over a town, or use creative to spawn them in underground. Might have to try that next time my daughter and I play.

[LibraryOgre]

That would be neat. Wonder if you could dome over a town, or use creative to spawn them in underground. Might have to try that next time my daughter and I play.

I did use an ungodly number of glass panes, and a few glass blocks, to make a greenhouse for a cactus.

[Wookieetank]

I did use an ungodly number of glass panes, and a few glass blocks, to make a greenhouse for a cactus.

Bwa hahahaha, I'm imagining a lone cactus dead center in a massive greenhouse listening to emo music.

[LibraryOgre]

Bwa hahahaha, I'm imagining a lone cactus dead center in a massive greenhouse listening to emo music.

Pretty much, though I did not install a juke box.

[Rynjin]

Who IS that masked man?

[Mx.Silver]

Not sure if the P3 female protagonist got an official name, now that I think of it.

It's Kotone Shiomi.

wrt to the rest of the series, I think Persona 1 is the only one of the 6 mainline Persona games where the protagonist doesn't have an official name. In Persona 2's case, Tasuya Suou (Innocent Sin) and Maya Amano (Eternal Punishment) both feature very prominently in the other's game under those respective names, so I don't know if you'd even need to qualify those names as 'official' (I don't actually know if it's even possible to rename Maya in Eternal Punishment).

[Zevox]

Exactly. The game industry treats its workers like garbage and none of these additional profits have ever trickled down to the working masses that actually make the games.

Aye, but unless we want to try and organize some kind of mass boycott of most game developers, there's not a lot we can do about that directly. And certainly it'll remain true regardless of exactly what the price tag on the games is.

It's also kind of tied up with issues we can't really talk about here, because politics.

It's Kotone Shiomi.

Neat. I'll have to keep that in mind should I ever replay Persona Q2. Though much like with her counterpart, I've been thinking of her as Minako for so long I doubt Kotone will ever truly catch on with me.

[WritersBlock]

Finally getting around to making real progress toward finishing Superdimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls. The time eater mechanic is not favorite thing the series has done (have to take tons of intentional losses to reset the timeline and get a change to do the missions I did not get to in time) but I go give them credit for trying something new, and it gives the game a bit of a rougelite element.

No level cap remover dlc to let you level past level 99 all the way up to 999, instead they split leveling between traditional levels and character class levels which was a cool little experiment for this game. (99 level cap and 50 class level cap once you unlock the upgrade to uncap class levels from what I can tell.)

[warty goblin]

Got a nice bit further into Forspoken today; I'm really liking this.

To be upfront there are definitely flaws, some of which border on the infuriating. The game loves to have you walk like fifteen feet during a conversation, then switch to a cutscene, then switch back to what looks like normal gameplay, but with a locked camera and no movement for more conversation, and all sorts of pointless shenanigans like this. Maybe they were going for something like 2012 Tomb Raider, where the cutscenes work into gameplay so tightly you often can't tell when the switch happens? If so, they failed, because it's never less than jarring.

There's also a 'stealth' section. It's bad and dumb and hopefully they don't do it again. Fortunately it's also easy and short.

There's some braindead bits in how the characters interact with the world - specifically guards - but whatever. The actual interpersonal writing remains strong, and I find Frey an engaging character. She's a total pain in the ass, which I find a real change of pace and quite enjoyable. Like, I don't want to be around her, but I'm not playing the game to pretend to have the protagonist as a friend, I'm playing because I'm interested in her as a character, and she does interesting things. She makes mistakes, she isn't particularly nice to most people, and she's clearly way in over her head and does not want to be here. All excellent character traits that create interesting conflict with other characters and can propel the narrative. It isn't a masterful script, but it also isn't the "Boy you sure are awesome Mr/Ms Protagonist!" "Yes thank you I am awesome, let us bask in my awesomeness together." ego-pandering tedium that way, way too many games do. I'm annoyed by the bad interplay of interactive bits and cutscenes during story portions, but I find I enjoy the story in spite of that.

And then there's the open world. This is, at least in initial impressions, Elden Ring but actually good. That is to say it's very desolate, and is mostly full of stuff to pick up and enemies to murder. I don't think you have to do much open world grinding if you don't want to, but it's fun to poke around. There's inevitable lore notes, and I found a pretty cool dungeon culminating in a pretty good boss fight. I hate boss fights, and this was actually enjoyable, so high marks there. For very obvious story reasons you aren't going to meet any still human people out of the hub city, so it's just kill or run past everything you meet. And killing them is a lot of fun*. Right trigger is offensive magic, left is utility. Right button lets you switch offensive spells, left switches utility. So you jump around like a magic maniac spamming explosive gravel at things and summoning weird plants that shoot rocks or whipping people with a huge vine and it's just smooth, delicious carnage. There's a rating system where you get more XP and loot for playing well, i.e. using different abilities, attacking enemies from behind or the side, doing finishing moves, and not taking damage. Damage drops your score like a rock, so even though against standard open world creeps you're pretty tanky you're really incentivized to not get hit.

The magic parkour system is decent as well. It's a bit hard to control with how fast you are, but hey, no futzing with mounts or anything. Just press go and you go and it looks awesome.

*That sounds bad.

[Anonymouswizard]

If there's one thing in Persona 5 that drives me up the wall it's that the game can never say anything just once. And not in a potentially useful way either.

It'll have a cutscene going over some plot detail, then after the cutscene pop up an IM conversation about the exact same thing. Then if you're unlucky have another cutscene about the exact same thing in two days. If you're tutorialised about something you'll get it in conversation and then a popup explaining it again, and if it's the 'weather affects Momentos' tutorial this happens twice in a row. Then every single optional social link level up follows itself up with a phone call about the exact same stuff. It's even worse when you just had a cutscene about this two minutes ago but because you had an event during the day the characters are going to recap what happened then before coming to a decision they could have made in that previous dialogue. And then have a text chat about the same thing immediately after the cutscene has ended.

I'm not kidding, Yusuke's introduction is one of the worst bits of pacing I've ever seen. Either the second conversation or the IM chat could have been cut with no consequences.

Comparatively things like most social links running into stat checks is a relatively minor annoyance. You don't want to be levelling up your SLs too early, so as long as most don't have early checks looking for rank 5 attributes it's just a good reminder to divide your free time among multiple things. Even having to actually make coffee to progress Sojiro's social link isn't that bad.

[Lord Raziere]

If there's one thing in Persona 5 that drives me up the wall it's that the game can never say anything just once. And not in a potentially useful way either.

Yeah, Persona 5 is really bad about making multiple scenes for things that could just be one, or making things scenes that didn't need to be made at all, and drawing things out needlessly. like there is just a ton of dialogue and social stuff that could've been done more efficiently or faster, it has style, but its really overwrought and redundant like that, it just makes everything real slow, drawn out and glacial when it doesn't need to be. its just lot a fat that could've been trimmed.

[Form]

I've finished the first Somnium Files games and the writing is considerably better than in its sequel. The writing still isn't that great, but at least it provides a decent enough detective story. It does have many of the same problems, but to a far lesser degree. Having played the first game I'm also taking note of a certain amount of laziness in making Nirvana Initiative, because they sure recycled a lot of the exact same characters and locations.

I've also played through Deadspace 2 again. It's been years (maybe even a decade?) since I played it the first time and it's aged pretty well. I'd forgotten how satisfying it is to stomp corpses for loot and to make sure they stay dead (Die, necromorph, die! *stomp stomp*). I'm eyeing the Deadspace remake now too. I'm in a Deadspace mood now and the remake has apparently been well received so far.

[Zombimode]

Just finished A Plague Tale: Innocence. This game managed to eventually win me over by its second half.
For a good portion of the game I had difficulties to become invested. I was even thinking about removing the sequel from my wishlist.

Now, after finishing it I feel like I had a good time and I will definitely play the sequel at some point.

So, what is the deal with Plague Tale Innocence?

Looking over a couple of reviews I find myself agreeing with the common points if critique leveled against the game: that a) the game mechanics are weak/lack depth, and b) that the game does not really challenge the player.
My own spin on these two points would be this:
1. The mechanics of the game are shallow and as such it is difficult to create scenarios in which the gameplay alone is entertaining.
2. For a very significant portion the game does not even attempt to create such scenarios.

The first 7 or so chapters (out of 17, but two of those are pure walking-sim) are entirely composed of singular problems to which the solutions are immediately obvious. The player just has to execute them and that devolves into more or less just pressing the right button. Press Enter to Continue gameplay if you will.
Now, this fact alone does not explain why the two issues are such a problem for the game.
To understand this, we have to look into what the game actually is about and what kind of experience it tries to offer. The game is actually quite straight forward: it does NOT focus on interpersonal relationships, the institution of the Inquisition, the socio-economics of the time period, or historical events like the 100 years war or the Black Death. All of those themes are present and they form the backdrop of the narrative and provide color but they do not carry the narrative. Instead the game is about how the protagonist and her little brother are thrust into a dangerous and horrific world were they are constantly on the run, in which they have to look out for each other and eventually find a solution to their troubles. Surviving in this world of death, violence and disease is the cornerstone of the game's narrative. And as such this narrative will fail to be effective if the gameplay does not match the supposed danger. This exactly is the case in Plague Tale.

So why do I still have an overall favorable impression of the game? Well, simply put because the game eventually does ramp up the difficulty: both more complex situations for the player to find a solution for, and more demanding executions of plans. This coincidences with a pronunciation of the dark fantasy themes of the game which for me at least was a point of interest. Now with the gameplay better matching the narrative I got more and more immersed in the game. The audio-visual design is top-notch throughout the whole game.

Bottom line: A Plague Tale Innocence is a flawed experience that might still be worthwhile if you are willing to look over the extended tutorial that is the first half of the game and the general limitations of the gameplay mechanics.

[tyckspoon]

Then every single optional social link level up follows itself up with a phone call about the exact same }stuff.

Small point but this was an addition to Royal - the followup phone calls weren't in the base game - and are largely present to give you more chances to gain confidant points within the advancement events and not have to commit too many non-advancing time slots.

.. This does make one of the game's other things pretty pointless, which is the large list of items that only exist to be gifted to confidants; if you're using your time well and making optimal dialogue choices in the advancement scenes you'll almost never spend time with somebody that isn't ranking up, and so never have an opportunity (or really a reason) to give them said gifts.