goodeye8

I haven’t played Mordhau but based on what I’ve seen of gameplay it has a different issue I have with first person melee, which is that you have no perception of reach. If you can’t identify how far you or your opponents can attack then the gameplay turns into sticking your face in your opponents face and I find that pretty annoying. I guess I’m kinda picky about my melee combat.

After giving it some thought I kinda agree with the author. Not in the hyperbolic sense that it’s the worst thing ever, nor in the sense that I don’t like parrying because I suck at it, but I agree on the point where he’s talking about fencing.

There’s so much more creative freedom and depth in actual martial arts, HEMA, fencing etc. that is just completely missing from most games. You don’t get the contact feel of your opponent, you can’t physically feel what your opponent will do. You can’t really gauge how far your attack will reach or, more importantly, how much range your opponents have. You can’t choose your angle of attack and, again more importantly especially in the context of parrying, choose how you defend. Your attacks are generally just a button click at which point the character does whatever attack has been programmed. Your defense is just a button click that generally blocks all attacks in front of you. Your parry is also just a button click that if timed right just parries (and sometimes automatically ripostes as well). All the nuance of melee combat is simplified to “one button for blocking/parrying and one button for attacking”.

So yeah, parrying does suck until we can turn it into something more engaging than just timing a button press.

It’s pretty much just an expansion to the first world and expanded the lore of that world. I thought the first world was also the most interesting so I definitely enjoyed it. I didn’t try out the new archetype but it looked interesting. I think it’s definitely worth picking up on sale.

Are you sure it’s all negative? Because on my steam the base game is “Mostly positive”. The DLCs are “Mixed” and outside of the The awakened king I can’t say much about the DLCs.

As for my short review. I’m not sure what those people think Remnant 1 was about but for me it was unique worlds, unique builds and unique enemies. Those things together give you an unique gameplay experience and Remnant 2 expands on all of those things.

The aesthetic was excellent in Remnant and Remnant 2 continues that by making those worlds even more detailed. There were multiple times where I just looked in awe at what the artists had concocted together. The only time where I felt the artistic vision wearing thin was literally the end of the game. I have vivid memories of all the worlds that are available in adventure mode, the final area ended up being unremarkable compared to everything that had come before it.

The builds in Remnant were pretty unique but I personally felt like the game didn’t give you enough tools early game to mid game to really build something out. You had guns, armor, trinkets, traits and mods but it all felt kinda constrained. Remnant 2 expands that by additionally giving you class archetypes, weapon mutators and you can modify the relic (the heart thingy that heals you in Remnant 1) and add relic fragments. All all those things individually are also expanded. Compared to the first game you’re going to get more guns, more armors, more rings, more amulets, just more of everything necessary to make a build.

The enemies in Remnant were great, an excellent mix of small enemies, minibosses and big bosses. Remnant 2 expands all of them with an even greater mix of small enemies, minibosses and big bosses. I’m not going to spoil any bosses but I definitely found them fun and memorable. The final boss is the only exception that comes to mind as I remember that being a frustrating fight.

The only objectively negative thing I can say about Remnant 2 was the performance. I don’t know if they’ve released some patches for it, but when I played around the launch of the awakened king it was borderline unplayable without upscaling.

If you enjoyed Remnant then it’s definitely worth picking up Remnant 2. Remnant 2 improves on everything that was great about Remnant.

I’m pretty sure the game is enjoyable, but is it really $70 (Or in case of EU 80€ which to be crystal clear is a fucking joke of a price) enjoyable? I thought about buying Doom TDA but when I saw the price tag I decided to buy V Rising instead. I’m pretty sure for more than half the price I’m getting as much enjoyment out of V Rising as I would out of Doom TDA.

My issue with the increase of premium pricing is mainly pragmatic. There’s no reason to pay that price when you could get just as good or better games cheaper.

There’s no reason to look at Steam numbers because the biggest extraction shooter isn’t on Steam, yet.

I’m willing to eat my words but I doubt I need to. In a world where Clair Obscur costs $50 I don’t how see how BL could be $30 better than one of the best games released this year.

She’s not just the main character towards the end, she is the main character of the story. We play Geralt, who is a side character in Ciri’s story.

Exactly. They can charge $200 if they want to but it doesn’t mean people are going to buy at that price. The price point needs to be where people are okay paying for it and I don’t see it happening at $80. Okay, I lied a bit, I see it happening for some games but not for BL4.

We’re supposed to take racism and far-right conspiracies as legitimate backlash? Normal people don’t care about shit like that. I’m with the other person, the reception was lukewarm because it played it safe.

Once maybe twice, sure. Enough times for someone to make a post about it? I also wouldn’t say it’s a red flag but it’s definitely weird.

Just take some basic safety steps, like discharging the capacitor and you’ll be fine

You already lost the average gamer at “discharging the capacitor”.

I was talking in the context of extraction shooters. I can’t think of a single extraction shooter where you could add attachments but not remove them. I’ve also yet to see anyone familiar with the extraction shooter genre think it’s a good idea. If you think it’s a good idea you’re free to defend it.

I think Bungie still has experience making successful live service games, Destiny 2 has been a massive success for Bungie. The issue with Bungie is that they’ve forgotten how to release good games. Destiny 1 released kinda meh, but a year after launch started crawled back to being generally well received. Destiny 2 release (followed by the Curse of Osiris expansion) almost killed the studio, a year after launch started crawling back into being great and only in the last years really dropped off (when resources were pulled away from Destiny to Marathon). It feels almost like there are some head up their ass lead designers at Bungie who just won’t listen to feedback and release a shitty game. Then the live team takes over the project, listen to actual feedback and fixes the stupid shit that should’ve been fixed the first time around.

Even with Marathon they had that event where streamers (and some other media people) got to play the game at Bungie and then Bungie asked for their feedback and when they got feedback on some really stupid things (like not being able to take off attachments from guns) they just went “We know, that’s intentional”. They’re deliberately making design decisions that anyone with experience within the genre would instantly say “that’s a bad idea”. I don’t know whose head needs to be pulled out of their ass but if Bungie doesn’t want to release Marathon as a flop they need to do it quickly.

On a slightly different topic. I love how some people got to experience Marathon and Arc raiders in close proximity. Prior to the playtest people were cautiously optimistic about Marathon but Arc raiders evoked no emotion in anyone. And now it’s more than reversed. People are praising Arc raiders and Marathon is seen as a lost cause.

Because the verification system doesn’t take performance into consideration at all. It’s more of a “how much effort does it take to get the game running” indicator.

I never refuted that?

Exactly. Skepticism is about casting doubt on beliefs and dogmas, not outright rejecting facts. When it comes to germs and vaccines there’s scientific consensus on those matters. They’re as close to facts as you can get. But rejecting those you’re not a skeptic, you’re a denier. There’s no scientific debate on those topics, only a political debate on whether to reject science or not.

Except the production costs have also gone down. The development itself is easier thanks to better tooling and developers no longer require putting out physical media (which used to be a pretty significant part of cost).

And there’s no excuse for $80 when Clair Obscur released at $50 and is one of the best games released this year. I seriously doubt BL4 will be $30 more impressive than Clair Obscur. How about studio heads do their job and streamline their production process to make better products for lower costs instead of offloading their bloat onto the customers.

I’ve been saying it for the last decade, there’s no real “games are too expensive to make” problem. There’s only studios choosing the “go big or go home” death spiral where they inflate the budget and need a hit to stay afloat. But then after every hit the budget grows even bigger requiring an even bigger hit until eventually they’re going to flop and the studio goes under. They could just not do that and have a sustainable business. And I get that it’s not only the game developers fault. Part of the blame falls on the publishers who most likely force budgets to balloon so they could make more money (if the game is a success). But when I say they could just not do that I mean both the developer and publisher. Both of them should be smarter than that.

But clearly even with all the major flops it has been a successful strategy, because they’ve been at it since at least mid 2000s. It’s only in the recent years where it’s really starting to strain all the AAA publishers as the budgets have grown too big even for them. These price increases are an outcome of this budget ballooning. They’re feeling their bottom line taking a hit so they increase the price to mitigate the risk.

Personally I said fuck them, let it crash and let’s get more studios like Sandfall, who made an exceptional games for a reasonable price.