Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

[Fabricant451]

The Outer Worlds is a good game. 10/10 would sell my soul to space corporate overlords.

[Gelatinous Cube]

I'm glad to hear how well it's been received. I had a lot of expectations for the next big Obsidian IP, so it's good that they're still solid as a rock.

[Fabricant451]

Now that Death Stranding is an unfun modern version of QWOP trying to be Journey bookended by Kojima's godawful writing maybe finally people will come to realize what a hack he is and that being an auteur doesn't give you a free pass when your games have been shit for a decade.

[NuttsnBolts]

Now that Death Stranding is an unfun modern version of QWOP trying to be Journey bookended by Kojima's godawful writing maybe finally people will come to realize what a hack he is and that being an auteur doesn't give you a free pass when your games have been shit for a decade.

@Fabricant451

So I shouldn't tell you that I like Kojima's work?

[Fabricant451]

<Snipped quote by Fabricant451>

So I shouldn't tell you that I like Kojima's work?

@NuttsnBolts

You're allowed to like whatever you want. Just because I think he gets undeserved praise for being some kind of auteur when he's proven multiple times that he's bad at managing budgets, time, and penning narratives for his narrative driven games doesn't mean you can't like his stuff. I hope you enjoy an actual walking simulator full of melodramatic poorly written monologues and metaphors about as subtle as a claw hammer to the skull, I genuinely do. But I just...I think Kojima sucks so I'll take any chance to make that known.

[NuttsnBolts]

I don't know how you can critique the game like so when there is clearly more mechanics shown than walking. Journey was an amazing game and that was nothing more than a travel through a sandy and snowy landscape, and Death Stranding has more mechanics than that.

What remains of Edith Finch is a walking simulator. You can't compare that to Death Stranding...

[Fabricant451]

I don't know how you can critique the game like so when there is clearly more mechanics shown than walking. Journey was an amazing game and that was nothing more than a travel through a sandy and snowy landscape, and Death Stranding has more mechanics than that.

What remains of Edith Finch is a walking simulator. You can't compare that to Death Stranding...

@NuttsnBolts

What Remains of Edith Finch is a two hour tightly focused experience. Death Stranding is a 40+ hour experience book-ended by 10 hours of tedious exposition. Mechanics don't make a game good, and if a game is mired in mechanics without making the mechanics work in a fun way then it makes the game worse because of it. Death Stranding is first, foremost, and primarily a walking simulator in the truest sense of the word. It's like American Truck Simulator but with the walking controls of QWOP and meters upon mechanics to keep track of with the interesting bit being the asynchronous co-op that isn't really co-op but kind of is co-op. Just because the game has vehicles doesn't make it suddenly not a walking simulator.

Walking simulator isn't a derogatory statement as much as some would like to think it is.

Death Stranding is a game where if you happen to kill an enemy you're told to carry the corpse somewhere - often up somewhere high and out of the way - to properly dispose of it or else it'll explode. Death Stranding is a game where you play Jenga with cargo that you deliver cross country while trying to get people to sign up for the internet. Death Stranding is a game where social media likes are currency, cell phones are handcuffs, and characters speak in tired metaphors for hours on end. If someone finds it fun to deliver pizzas but only after arranging your cargo so the pizza sits horizontally in your cargo sack while then having to plan the optimal route so you don't trip over rocks and watch your cargo spill out on the floor or get rained on by time so you have to repair it then by all means, enjoy it. But I can put the Death Stranding soundtrack in my American Truck Simulator radio and get virtually the same experience without Hideo Kojima thinking he's saying something profound in the same way college stoners taking philosophy do.

The difference between a game like Journey and a game like Death Stranding is that Journey was a passion project and Death Stranding is a vanity project. Journey didn't have to tell a story because the journey itself was the story and that personal experience contained within. What Remains of Edith Finch was a smartly focused, often clever narrative about life, death, and the legacy both leave on a family. Death Stranding has a character say "I brought you a metaphor" and has characters named Fragile, Heartman, Die Hardman, and Deadman explain their names for twenty minutes even with obvious reasons as to why. Metal Gear Solid was full of lengthy cutscenes of characters talking, especially in 4, but at least they didn't spend twenty minutes saying why Revolver Ocelot was called Revolver fucking Ocelot.

If Hideo Kojima didn't want to have his game be called a walking simulator then he shouldn't have been so purposely vague about it, but something tells me if he had come out and said "It's a game where you walk or drive and deliver packages and the more people who walk the same route or put up bridges the easier it is to travel to your destination to deliver your package" it would sound a lot less interesting to those who buy into whatever bullshit Hideo Kojima spits out. With dozens of outlets calling the game a walking simulator, be that in a negative review or a positive review, then I feel like there's some merit to calling it that.

It's a game whose loop is delivering packages in true fetch quest fashion for 40+ hours. If that sounds fun to you, great, enjoy it. I play American Truck Simulator to unwind sometimes and that's a game where you just drive often empty roads for two hours real time. Hideo Kojima is like the Japanese David Cage except people give Kojima's writing a pass in the same way they don't for David Cage. I don't like either, but at least I can laugh at David Cage games.

[Majoraa]

Ngl, looking back at Beyond: Two Souls, Jodie was better off as some sort of detective than a super solder by default. Could've gotten wrapped up in the goverment's spook stuff when she found her mom after spending a couple or so years trying to track down her location, figuring out what happened and stuff. .-.

...Sorry, Cage's games got mentioned and I had this in mind so, yeeh.

[Fabricant451]

Ngl, looking back at Beyond: Two Souls, Jodie was better off as some sort of detective than a super solder by default. Could've gotten wrapped up in the goverment's spook stuff when she found her mom after spending a couple or so years trying to track down her location, figuring out what happened and stuff. .-.

...Sorry, Cage's games got mentioned and I had this in mind so, yeeh.

@Majoras End

But if she was a detective how could she be forced into a relationship with CIA boy even after deliberately sabotaging everything!

[Majoraa]

@Fabricant451

I haven't really thought about how to write dat boi into that, or if he should just be written off in general.

Their relationship kinda confuses me a bit though, like how old even is he when they get together?

[Fabricant451]

Disco Elysium is probably the best game of the year provided you like cRPGs, great writing, and dialog heavy interactions.

[Fabricant451]

American Trudge Simulator (Death Stranding) would be a better game if it took out the ghosts and the pretentious Kojima writing. It wouldn't be, like, good but it would be better. The best thing in the game, apart from the social elements, is when the camera pulls out and Icelandic folk rock serenades you as you approach the destination or just cross an empty field in solitude and reflection.

But then the game drops invisible ghost guys on you and just adds more systems and mechanics that don't work well together and makes you go even slower in a game where your top foot speed is 'slower than a turtle's ass' and then your dumb baby is crying and being a baby so you have to rock the fucking controller but not too quickly and oh fuck you turned too quickly now all your cargo is in the fucking water god dammit now people are talking at me for five minutes telling me how to open a menu and press X fuck this.

If the game just did away with the stealth ghost bits and focused more on the initial hurdle of traveling in a non-wifi area it would be better for it. The terrain, the MULEs who attack if you're carrying cargo, the time rain, and plotting the fastest route while balancing tools and cargo is already a fair challenge for the player, throwing stealth sections at you because oh no the wifi isn't up and it's raining just makes it even more of a chore. And it's not like it's any more fun to use the shit and piss and blood grenades on them, it just makes it take longer in a different manner.

There are sometimes moments of, like, genuine artistry but it's sandwiched between too many mechanics that don't work in sync and Hideo Kojima smelling his own farts and expecting you to enjoy the smell with him.

Game's not fun, 10/10 GOTY

[mickilennial]

I'm just not interested in Death Stranding at this point. It doesn't seem like it was made for me and this is coming from a Kojima fan.

[Hey Im Jordan]

Pokémon good

Death Stranding bad

[Fabricant451]

Pokémon good

Death Stranding bad

@Hey Im Jordan

You just don't understand Kojima's masterpiece you fucking SHILL

[Fabricant451]

Jedi: Fallen Order doesn't have an opening title crawl so I don't know if I can take it seriously as a Star Wars product.

[Potemking]

I was able to name Sobble 'CrybabyBitch'.

10/10 Pokemon game

[Majoraa]

GameFreak has ran out of ideas. ORAS and XY GTS is dead. No Harmoknight sequel in sight.

Big oof.

[Fabricant451]

Coalossal is the best new Pokemon and I will fucking fight you if you disagree

[SleepingSilence]

So I was going to originally come here, and laugh at some of obvious shilling and the white knighting I saw on twitter about this game, which is officially more absurd than the criticism ever was. (And mock my friend for buying it so soon because 'his friend got the other one for his birthday', despite this game being supposedly closer to Sun&Moon quality, a game he didn't like or even finish.)

So my roommate brought it and already saw/showed me graphical errors & pop in. And apparently there's an overly complicated progress in order to even make a new game/no starting menu. And he's upset that he can't call his Scorbunny, 'Aids'. (Vermin, was his next choice for the curious.) Among other things. The buyers remorse is strong in this one.



Lazy Edit: So I double checked, and Google is sponsoring a site called Dealclock that's showing that it's selling the double pack of this game for 40 dollars. And if you go to their actual website, it's jacked up over $160. ($50 more than the real cost.) So my roommate found illegal/false advertising. Yay! I'll admit, it would've been much funnier if the price was already dropped that low.

And because I want to be nice and still give a price drop PSA, roommate still got the game for like $49 bucks at Walmart (no, not at same price as the online deal sale), which is still 10 bucks cheaper than if you get it online or at other retail chains, so if you still want to buy the amazaballs game, say IGN, you can already get it *cheaper* if you know where to look.