What Are you Playing 7: Deadly Sims

[GloatingSwine]

Huh. Well, Scorn seems to elicit quite polarizing responses: on the one hand there is a lot of negativity surrounding Scorn, for very diverse reasons. Then there is the camp of players that are truly fascinated by the game. There seems to be almost no middle ground.

I dunno, almost all the criticism I heard of Scorn was pretty much identical. Combat's abysmal and the checkpoint system makes you repeat puzzles, which are rote when you know how to do them, due to deaths in combat.

[Anonymouswizard]

Started Cyberpunk 2077, which is definitely a computer game, playing as a transfem Nomad V. I of course have already installed the mods which give more freedom when it comes to changing customisation options, and it turns out there's so few anyway that I'm not sure why I'd want to have to go to a ripperdoc to change half of them.

The gameplay is... fine. I've put it on easy because I suck at shooters. It's honestly nothing special from what I'm seeing, just mostly a standard AAA 'play it your way' affair. Which to me means going in guns blazing, probably a shotgun or assault rifle once I've picked them up. As for graphics my PC's technically not powerful enough, but I knew mods existed for that and have managed to get a playable framerate for most of it. At this point it's not feeling as good as the Shadowrun games did, but I'll see if that changes once the story picks up and I get some bloody cyberware installed.

[GloatingSwine]

Cyberpunk 2077 is really good when you're doing the properly written quests, but the side stuff (NCPD dispatch, the odd jobs for fixers) is a lot more bland (and will likely lead to you being horribly OP for the main stuff).

Also be warned, most vehicles handle like ass even fully patched, get a motorbike.

[Zombimode]

I dunno, almost all the criticism I heard of Scorn was pretty much identical. Combat's abysmal and the checkpoint system makes you repeat puzzles, which are rote when you know how to do them, due to deaths in combat.

Yes, and those complains do not make much sense and I suspect that they are not the real reasons for the dislike.

Combat: it's not "abysmal". You have to press and hold RMB before you can attack, but other then that its bog-standard FPS. It's not a Boomer Shooter, though. Also, the vast majority of enemies don't have to be fought. There is actually very little to gain from that. You can run past them. Or just wait until they are gone. Many enemies actually don't stick around. And once they're gone, they're gone. No respawns.
The checkpoints are not transparent to the player. That is a conscious design choice that fits the game well in that it adds to the tension.
It's only an issue if you try to bash your head into every enemy that you come across. And if you don't die you don't have to repeat puzzles.

I get that Scorn is not the game that some people expected or wished it to be. But criticizing the game for that is like complaining that Thief is a bad hack'n'slash. Or that a turn-based strategy game is a crappy RTS.


On topic: since the weather has turned my vacation into a gaming vacation I'm picking up the next game. After Scorn I need something with more, well, text. So... it's Technobabylon.
I have rather high expectations. For one, I'm a sucker for this style of neon-cyberpunk setting. Furthermore that game has received pretty high praise with some calling it the best point-and-click adventure in recent years*.

*with a fairly lenient definition of "recent" - is 2015 really 8 years ago?

[Rynjin]

The game was advertised as a survival horror shooter in the same vein as Resident Evil or Dead Space. That's on the devs for creating those expectations, not the players.

More to the point, what is it good at? It's not a good shooter, of any variety. It has low weapon variety, and the ones that do exist are bland and don't feel punchy. Enemies are sparse and not very interesting to fight.

So combat sucks, moving on.

It's also a puzzle game. Unfortunately the puzzles are braindead easy even through the layers of obfuscation the game tries to throw up, so it's not exactly an engaging experience there. It's certainly no Portal.

Even walking sims usually have a good story to go with it, but what Scorn amounts to once you strip out the visuals is "guy walks through a factory, gets mugged, walks some more, then the guy who mugged him earlier comes back and kills him".

What does that leave? "It looks nice". Okay? That doesn't make it a good game in the slightest.

[Zombimode]

The game was advertised as a survival horror shooter in the same vein as Resident Evil or Dead Space. That's on the devs for creating those expectations, not the players.

I can't comment on what kind of advertising the game got before and during it's release.

But the following comes from the Steam product page (which is repeated word for word in the GoG product page):

Scorn is an atmospheric first-person horror adventure game set in a nightmarish universe of odd forms and somber tapestry.

It is designed around the idea of "being thrown into the world". Isolated and lost inside this dream-like world, you will explore different interconnected regions in a non-linear fashion. The unsettling environment is a character itself.

Every location contains its own theme (story), puzzles and characters that are integral in creating a cohesive world. Throughout the game you will open up new areas, acquire different skill sets, weapons, various items and try to comprehend the sights presented to you.

That is pretty accurate (except the "non-linear" part - the game is completely linear) and in no way points towards the likes of Dead Space or Resident Evil.

What does that leave? "It looks nice". Okay? That doesn't make it a good game in the slightest.

I have already detailed what I liked about the game.

Some other positive perspectives about the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lguxWkjGsK0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGzeYfwVa5U

[LibraryOgre]

Page 49, need to come up with a new thread name soon.

My vote is "What Are You Playing (2023 Reboot)"

Works for me! New thread momentarily.

[Eldan]

Started Cyberpunk 2077, which is definitely a computer game, playing as a transfem Nomad V. I of course have already installed the mods which give more freedom when it comes to changing customisation options, and it turns out there's so few anyway that I'm not sure why I'd want to have to go to a ripperdoc to change half of them.

The gameplay is... fine. I've put it on easy because I suck at shooters. It's honestly nothing special from what I'm seeing, just mostly a standard AAA 'play it your way' affair. Which to me means going in guns blazing, probably a shotgun or assault rifle once I've picked them up. As for graphics my PC's technically not powerful enough, but I knew mods existed for that and have managed to get a playable framerate for most of it. At this point it's not feeling as good as the Shadowrun games did, but I'll see if that changes once the story picks up and I get some bloody cyberware installed.

I think it had a few pretty good points towards the end of the main quest, which at least to me felt emotionally impactful. And I quite like city and the visuals, just drying and running around is fun. Other than that, yes, it was thoroughly "One of the Games of All Time".