It's getting rereleased and uprezzed soon for consoles (maybe pc too?)

 

Star Citizen, fuck yeah. Just my two cents.

Also, if you're interested in SC, have a look at a game called Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Not at all similar as games, but if you like one, odds are the other is also your thing.

 

Bethesda is on the shitlist, along with Gearbox, Bioware, and quite a few others. You will note I only liked two Fallout games. There have been a fair bit more than that, both canon and not.

And holy shit don't get me started on Skyrim. I liked Skyrim, but holy shit.

We finally get dedicated crafting, crafting benches, and the ability to use extra materials to 'improve' weapons, and yet they take out weapon durability? What the fuck. What the fuck. How fucking casual are we, now? Maybe if I actually had to use some of these zillions of ore bars to keep my gear's condition up, I wouldn't be shitting them in the streets and stuffing a singularity's worth of material into a fucking barrel.

You realize what they cut out, right? There was going to be this massive territory game going on. That was what the Radiant AI they bragged so much about during development was for. The Stormcloaks and Imperials would dynamically meet up and fight, gaining and losing ground from each other, taking forts and holds, ect. Every major city could get invaded, repeatedly. You could help with all of this, both by directly participating in fights, and running Radiant Quests that would randomly generate and give an advantage to one side or the other, such as assassinating a key military figure, intercepting orders carried by courier and replacing them with new ones, bribing, persuading, or blackmailing officials in the towns the attackers or defenders are basing themselves out of, ect.

The council called to solve the issues of the Civil War was going to be the Elder Scrolls equivalent of what the ending for Mass Effect 3 could have been. There were at least six to seven major outcomes it could have, and the minor differences, such as who was in power, who you helped, who you opposed, and who you were friends or enemies with, would mean that there were probably going to be well over a hundred different possible outcomes total, including possible third choices for Jarl of various holds, killing some people like Maven Blackbriar outright or installing them with even greater power. You also were going to have ways to solve the problem in favor of a faction while killing off that factions leader (i.e. side with the Stormcloaks, give them the win, kill Ulfric in the process), and ways to solve the problem without resorting to one faction committing genocide on the other. One of the possible things you could do would have been to decisively solve the issue and unite the Stormcloaks and Imperials together into an army, either to drive out the Thalmor or to oppose the dragons, your choice.

But they cut it. 80% of this was ALREADY IN THE GAME, and they cut it, because fucking marketing blew a load in their pants over 11 11 11 and INSISTED the game be released on that day. If they'd had another half a year to work on it, we would have gotten something absolutely mindblowing. Instead, Bethesda just locked away everything they had already worked on. It's all in the game still, in an incomplete form. It's just nothing you can actually access.

The only remnants of this abandoned feature still in the game for you to see are the tables with flags, which were supposed to be part of the interface for playing general and tracking who had taken what and where, the siege of Whiterun, which was supposed to be a Radiant thing that could happen to any city as many times as the circumstances of the war dictated it, and the ability for Stormcloaks and Imperials to move into a fort after you've gone and cleared it out.

That's it. That's all that's left of it. That's why the council called by the civil war was so buggy in vanilla Skyrim. The game would keep trying to proc outcomes for events that were either cut or never put into the final product.

 

Well damn then its too bad they released it so early then. Especially now that delaying games has become the cool thing that Devs are getting into.

Still if they REALLY cared. They could have completed that and released a patch. They would have gained a lot of good grace and respect for that. Instead they opted for DLC's about building homes and such.

 

It's on my to-do list. I'm a pretty big fan of the oldschool piloting combat sim games, but many of the newer ones have been rather lackluster as of late. That said, Star Citizen looks goddamn amazing.

My biggest disappointment of late in regards to the genre was that Halo: Reach gave a pretty solid, if simplistic, showing of space combat sim, to the point that I got excited as fuck. . . and then it was literally just one ten minute segment of a single level. Didn't make it into multiplayer, and you never got to see it again. That physically hurt me.

Roberts has some pretty solid credentials under his belt, enough that I'm willing to give him a fair amount of faith on this one. I'm not pre-ordering, but I'm definitely getting hype. I've always felt that the gaming industry has lost some of it's better genres over time, like the original horde first person shooters like Painkiller, Serious Sam, and the original Duke Nukem that died to make way for the hallway corridor FPS games popularized by Call of Duty and Medal of Honor. The hardcore dogfighting sim, both space based and atmosphere based, were among the names and numbers of those lost. It seems like this will be a good opportunity to take a second look at the genre, and I would be thrilled if Roberts and his studio could help revive it.

Metro is the polar opposite of the old Horde FPS games, but it remains just as hardcore. Instead of fighting large hordes of enemies with vast amounts of ammunition and firepower, with the challenge of the game being an issue of skillful maneuvering and crowd control, it's a game born from the same womb as ARMA, where you're going to be counting bullets and doing everything you can to avoid being shot, because getting shot can kill you. You're also going to be doing everything you can to avoid being seen, because not being seen drastically reduces your chances of being shot.

It is possible, with some skill, to go through all the levels with guns blazing and kill everyone rambo style. However, it takes considerably more intelligence and skill to do so with stealth, killing as few people as possible (it's completely possible to play Metro: Last Light without killing anyone except for the very last person you see in the entire game, because he has to be killed, and indeed the best ending and the most difficult achievement in the game comes from doing so), and the game is designed with those intelligent and clever players in mind.

It's a great game, especially seeing how both Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light were made by twenty Russian guys using borrowed computers sitting in a cafeteria they got permission to use, working on a shoestring budget with basically no resources. The whole series isn't just great and worth playing: it's also a thumb in the eye of all the major developing houses that throw millions and millions of dollars and giant two hundred man developing and artistic teams at AAA projects, and only manage to turn out things of approximately comparable quality.

A garage of Russian friends with around eight thousand USD managed in a year what most AAA developers couldn't do with millions and a small army of 'professional' devs and artists. There's something about that that just makes me smile.

 

I'm pretty disgusted by all game publishing companies these days. I haven't touched anything from EA since ME3, and I don't plan to in the future. Also, after playing a lot of dota there just seems to be so little challenge in games. (Haven't played Dark Souls though)

Your description of Metro just ensured I'd play it, and I'll recommend it to a few friends who enjoy similar stuff too. Your emphasis on the skill + challenge of it has sold me. The fact that it was made by 20 Russians in a cafe makes it sound even more awesome.

As for Star Citizen? It's the only crowdfunding campaign I've ever backed, literally everything about Star Citizen is being done right as far as I can tell. It's not worth backing yet if you want to play imo, but that should change over the next few months.

Honestly, dogfighting didn't interest me at all, but I've played more Arena Commander than any other game bar dota so far, and that's just the single player mode. When all of the multiplayer functionality is added in, it should be incredible.

I'm also really excited about their FPS module. FPS as a genre is just something that hasn't interested me at all for the last 4-5 years at least. However, with Zero G combat, docking and boarding ships, and the way they deal with inertia... it could be amazing. Even if I don't like it that much, I think it has the chance to do something completely different from anything we've seen before.

The Persistent Universe is the thing im most excited for though, of course thats at least another 2 years away.

Regardless, just the way the game is being developed is amazing. Basically full transparency, pushing the envelope inevery single way. I could talk on about the game for ages tbh.

 

Dark Souls difficulty is really overhyped. It's more cheesy than hard.

It's still really enjoyable though.

Lords of the Fallen was just announced for a 31st of October release. It looks like an adequate filler until Bloodborne.
DS2 is decent too (on PC), but a lot of people were underwhelmed. Still good though.

I can't actually think of the last really hard game i've played that didn't affect my enjoyment as the difficulty increased. Probably a strategy game. Xcom?

 

On the Dark Souls note: if you're going to play a Souls game and you have the option, play Demon's Souls. They're all pretty good, but Demon's Souls is far and away the best of the lot.

 

Opinion is very much divided on that. Look up their differences on Google and see which appeals to you more.

If you like one, I doubt you'd hate the other though.

 

I actually did hate Dark Souls when it first came out. Felt like a shitty sequel to begin with, and the fact that the back half of the game was so obviously rushed didn't sit well with me.

I like it now, though. It's a pretty good game, definitely worth checking out if you can't play Demon's Souls.

 

I really cant recommend Metro: Last Light enough, I played although was never particularly enamored by Metro 2033 but literally every issue I had with the first game they solved in Last Light. The action is fast paced and intense, the atmosphere is deeply engaging, the controls and mechanics for literally any path you could choose have been vastly improved and the story is just flat out fun to play. My one gripe though

Spoiler

I had to learn this the hard way though if you want the good ending, at literally every opportunity possible avoid killing. There are a couple of situations where even the game acknowledges you had no other options but if possible do not kill a god damn thing. You will really really really really want to at multiple points but you have to resist.

 

Should I start with Metro: Last Light then? Or should I play the first game first, story wise. Keep in mind, I do like a good story.

 

The problem with going for the good ending in Last Light, is that the stealth system in the game is absolutely terrible. It's so shallow it's just ridiculous, all you have to do is shoot out a couple lights (even if an enemy is standing right next to it) and you're totally invisible so long as you don't stand right in front of an enemy's face. There seems to be no noticeable penalties for making noise, and as long as it's dark you barely even need to worry about hiding bodies. Personally I'd just forget about the good ending (it's cheesy as fuck anyway) and just play whatever way is more fun.