Gaming thoughts, bite-size chewables - new orange flavor!

[Papageno]

Alexios is an interesting case. The actor is Greek; he was born in Athens. But he moved to Canada as a three year old. I don't have nearly enough experience with Greek to tell a good accent from a bad one, but I can easily imagine how his accent could be different from someone who'd spent his whole life--or even childhood--in Greece.

Looks like the actress who played Kassandra, Melissanthi Mahut, went the other way-- born in Canada but raised in Greece. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissanthi_Mahut Her dad is Québecois and her mother is Greek. I think I've heard her interviewed in English and her normal speech in English is much less accented than what she does with the role, but when she "accents it up" so to speak she's got the right base for it. Apparently she also voiced Athena in Immortals: Fenyx Rising.

In college (a million years ago during the first Reagan Administration) I hung out for a while with this particularly gorgeous young Greek woman (extremely Greek Orthodox, so there was never any question of "whoopee," alas) and I got to know a few other Greeks, so the accent became very familiar to me.

 

[grommit!]

The next time a fight breaks out in the bad place, I propose Party Animals be used to settle the argument.

 

[Frosty Grin]

Did you want "pokémon" with machine guns?

I did not ask for it. But did I want it?

Michael is given to women though I would not say it is common. Nonetheless, it happens. Plus there are other names that are used for both men and women. Would something similar happen with Mikhail? I don't know enough about Russian culture and names.

Speaking of Russian names, it always amuses me that the (AFAIK) male name Sasha from Russian is exclusively used for girls/women here in the US.

Actually, Sasha isn't exclusively male in Russia. It's from Alexander/Alexandra, which both exist in Russian. So both boys and girls can be Sashas in Russia. But it's not the case with Mikhail - only men (and bears) can be Mishas. Even as other Eastern European characters may have variants like Mikaela (and Petra, and Ivana - which, again, don't exist in Russia). I suppose that's how Prey might have ended up with "Mikhaila".

My point about more common names in the English/American context was about names like Ashley, which can skew male or female in a way that changes with time. So this whole thing is more common, and complicated, than it might seem. Part of the culture.

And it's been rather amusing when Japanese games ask you to name your character in the beginning - it's rather common - and you realize that you don't know that many Japanese names. I guess you can name the Japanese character Mikhail. Or you can check a list of Japanese names online.

 

[malor]

SS2 is also a fundamentally different game from SS1. SS1 is the prototypical immersive sim, while SS2 is more of a survival horror game wearing the skin of an immersive sim. I love SS1 dearly, and am ambivalent on SS2 because the constant survival-horror-style ammo scarcity just ends up feeling tedious.

I always turn respawns off in SS2. IMO, that makes it a far better game. It changes it from survival horror into, well, I guess a horror-themed shooter. You can clear areas out and they stay clear.

I've tried to get into Arkane's Prey multiple times, and bounced off it every time. There's something annoyingly tedious about Prey that isn't there in most immersive sims. I think it's a product of the enemies hiding so often, stealth (a cornerstone gameplay style of immersive sims) being relatively ineffective (no stealth takedowns at a minimum), and bullet-sponginess.

You're right about the lack of such a scenery-chewing central antagonist like SHODAN as well.

Prey rarely rewards stealth, and it's quite difficult early on. One of the key insights is similar to the hamhanded 'shock 'em and whack 'em' routine from Bioshock. Bioshock made that combo unbelievably obvious, where Prey just expects you to figure out that its equivalent is Gloo gun and wrench. This is extremely good against mimics, and works reasonably well on many of the humanoid monsters. It's mostly mimics that are really dangerous early on, so getting that combo down will make the early game much more survivable.

Once you've gotten some upgrades, both to your skills and to your weapons, the game gets a lot easier. Enemies are much less spongy once you've upgraded your shotgun and beam weapon in particular. Don't do much improvement of the basic pistol; you can get a much better one later on, through a short sidequest. If you like the pistol, improve that one instead.

 

[Frosty Grin]

I have mixed feelings about games where stealth is always "effective" - where everything lines up etc. It can be fun, but it also can be gamey.

I recently played Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood, and I felt that one of the strongest aspects was that the effectiveness of stealth varies a lot - some encounters mandate you going out in the open, some encounters let you stealthily attack some enemies, so that the rest of the encounter is easier, some encounters don't quite line up, but you can try, and some are pretty much like puzzle games where you can stealth-attack the enemies in a particular order with particular timing.

 

[invertedpanda]

I recently played Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood

That game was such a steaming pile of werewolf waste, I just.. Ugh.. https://ghostgamer.news/werewolf-the-apocalypse-earthblood-review/

 

[Diabolical]

That game was such a steaming pile of werewolf waste, I just.. Ugh.. https://ghostgamer.news/werewolf-the-apocalypse-earthblood-review/

Seconded, invertedpanda. I beat it. But holy shit was that a waste of god damn time and money.
Heart of the Forest, a visual novel, was a MILES better W:tA game. Earthblood was a hodge-podge of mechanics that could have been interesting and well put together. Could have been. Wasn't. But could have! And the story was just... well. It exists.

 

[Diabolical]

I have now watched the Summer Games Fast 2023 stream, Day of the Dev's stuff, and the Devolver Direct.

Most of the games that I was hype for already I'm still hyped for. But there were several that came out of nowhere for me.

1) Stellaris Nexus and Star Trek Infinite (basically Star Trek Stellaris). Shut up and take my money, Paradox. Bastards.
2) Prince of Persia - Lost Crown. I'm getting strong Metroid Dread vibes for some reason.
3) Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior. Isometric hack and slash where your previous runs are fighting alongside you? Basically a cooperative ghost? I am seriously intrigued.
4) Summerhill. I have never been more intrigued by a game about shepherding, ever.
5) Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. An action hack and slash / souls like from Don't Nod set in Colonial/Westward Expansion North America where you hunt ghosts and monsters? Looks neat as hell.

Pretty much everything else was something I had read or seen stuff about before and am already excited about.
Especially: Alan Wake 2 & Hyper Light Breaker & Cocoon.
I skipped by those trailers/interviews/etc. I want as little information as possible heading into them, thank you!

Lies of P demo is apparently now live? As is Wizard With A Gun? I need to snag both of those.

 

[krimhorn]

Prey rarely rewards stealth, and it's quite difficult early on. One of the key insights is similar to the hamhanded 'shock 'em and whack 'em' routine from Bioshock. Bioshock made that combo unbelievably obvious, where Prey just expects you to figure out that its equivalent is Gloo gun and wrench. This is extremely good against mimics, and works reasonably well on many of the humanoid monsters. It's mostly mimics that are really dangerous early on, so getting that combo down will make the early game much more survivable.

Prey is a game where it feels like stealth is implemented exactly as you'd expect crouching to remain hidden would work in real life. Remaining outside of the enemy's eyeline is the key to getting around undetected and being quick to react when detected (or you stumble onto a teacup enemy - which is less interesting than the sound of it might imply as most of those are fixed points you get to know pretty well after the first playthrough) is how you get out of those. I found Prey to be one of the more rewarding games to get around undetected because it wasn't just "man in a box" but it was also one of the most difficult to do regularly. IIRC, there was one section in the crew quarters with a cheevo for not being detected that was nearly impossible to get.

 

[Hans Ollo]

Did you want "pokémon" with machine guns? Congratulations, your dreams have come true.

Oh man, I just assumed this turned into vaporware after not hearing any updates about it for so long. I’m not really into Pokemon but this is such a dystopian take on it I might have to get it.

 

[Papageno]

Actually, Sasha isn't exclusively male in Russia. It's from Alexander/Alexandra, which both exist in Russian. So both boys and girls can be Sashas in Russia.

Ah, I clearly didn't know that, so thanks. I'd only ever seen the name used in a Russian context in TV shows or films, and in those all the Sashas were male, so I assumed.*

As to Japanese names, let's see: Yoko (for obvious reasons) Yuka, Yuko, Yuki, Mariko, Sachiko... and that's about it for the girl's names. For boys, hmm: Noburo (or is it Nobuo), Hideo, Hideki, Hiro and I run out at that point. Gotta pay more attention.

BTW, what's the story with Nikita? I mean, the Western European world knows it from the Luc Besson film and its spinoffs, so we think of it as a woman's name, but is it in Russian?

 

[RyricKrael]

I have now watched the Summer Games Fast 2023 stream, Day of the Dev's stuff, and the Devolver Direct.

Most of the games that I was hype for already I'm still hyped for. But there were several that came out of nowhere for me.

1) Stellaris Nexus and Star Trek Infinite (basically Star Trek Stellaris). Shut up and take my money, Paradox. Bastards.

Okay that is kind of exciting, loved Birth of the Federation and Star Trek Armada. Rumor is near/pre-TNG timeline. Have to assume they’ll expand out if successful, paradox loves DLC.

I never fully got into Stellaris unfortunately.

 

[Quarthinos]

Okay that is kind of exciting, loved Birth of the Federation and Star Trek Armada. Rumor is near/pre-TNG timeline. Have to assume they’ll expand out if successful, paradox loves DLC.

I never fully got into Stellaris unfortunately.

I bought it when it first came out and never got really got past the middle of the game. I had enough raw production that anything other than the ancient empires was not going to be an issue, and I was bored building up for the confrontation, so I stopped and left it. I think one of the end game crises had started, and it just wasn't very threatening?

 

[Papageno]

Prey just expects you to figure out that its equivalent is Gloo gun and wrench.

Man, I really need to do Prey 2017 justice. I left my save so early on that I don't even have said Gloo gun.

A little further along in Control, which for some reason in my head canon I associate with Prey because they're both in the "freaky" category and came out around the same time.

So many good games started and never finished (The Witcher 3 too!).

 

[malor]

Man, I really need to do Prey 2017 justice. I left my save so early on that I don't even have said Gloo gun.

A little further along in Control, which for some reason in my head canon I associate with Prey because they're both in the "freaky" category and came out around the same time.

So many good games started and never finished (The Witcher 3 too!).

You get the Gloo gun as you arrive in the big central hub on the space station. You do have to notice it and pick it up, but if you're actually looking at things as you proceed, it's hard to miss. You will almost certainly have fought some mimics by the time you get it, but not that many.

 

[malor]

Okay that is kind of exciting, loved Birth of the Federation and Star Trek Armada. Rumor is near/pre-TNG timeline. Have to assume they’ll expand out if successful, paradox loves DLC.

I never fully got into Stellaris unfortunately.

It turned into an extremely expensive game, with all the DLC. The base game is hard to even play, anymore. The UI has become more or less one giant advertisement for all the mechanics you haven't bought yet.

 

[richleader]

I thought I'd have more FOMO over not being on the Diablo 4 train. There's a little bit in the back of my brain but I think I'm ok.

That might sound healthy or growth but I'm still have a habit of playing Magic the Gathering on Arena so if it's not one thing it's another -- and Magic is far less social since you're not rewarded with loot for playing with your friends, only with strangers. So there's worse things out there than ARPG grinding, there's card game grinding...

 

[Papageno]

I thought I'd have more FOMO over not being on the Diablo 4 train. There's a little bit in the back of my brain but I think I'm ok.

The FOMO in my case is really strong for the System Shock remake. I would have been all over that in 1994 but I was a Mac user/gamer at the time. Finally got a P2 400/Voodoo 3 3000 machine with an OMGYOOJ 10 GB HDD in 1999 , so I grabbed System Shock 2 on sale the next year (didn't finish it because it got too hard between respawning enemies and weapon degradation, but what I played was very cool and atmospheric).

 

[malor]

D4 is an always-online game that absolutely does not need to always be online. Ergo: no sale. Again.

 

[richleader]

You can play System Shock at any time, though, and it'd be the same as playing it today. Being on the leading edge of an ARPG is an entirely different experience. Jumping into Diablo 4 a year from now just won't be the same.

It's like showing up for a Dark Souls game now when there isn't anyone around to help with bosses and the only people left as invaders are sociopaths who do nothing but exploits. There's something special about launch weeks.

Go ahead and play the SS2 that you already own though. Just skim a wiki to remind yourself where the assault rifle is, save all your points for the skill, and you should be able to one-shot most enemies with great ammo economy.

 

[Scifigod]

It turned into an extremely expensive game, with all the DLC. The base game is hard to even play, anymore. The UI has become more or less one giant advertisement for all the mechanics you haven't bought yet.

Agreed, some of the dlc is so fundamental they should be included with the purchase of the base game.

 

[Papageno]

You can play System Shock at any time, though, and it'd be the same as playing it today. Being on the leading edge of an ARPG is an entirely different experience. Jumping into Diablo 4 a year from now just won't be the same.

It's like showing up for a Dark Souls game now when there isn't anyone around to help with bosses and the only people left as invaders are sociopaths who do nothing but exploits. There's something special about launch weeks.

Go ahead and play the SS2 that you already own though. Just skim a wiki to remind yourself where the assault rifle is, save all your points for the skill, and you should be able to one-shot most enemies with great ammo economy.

I take your point about how something like Diablo 4 and a single-player-only experience like System Shock are different in terms of FOMO. In the latter case it's more about "being part of the conversation" and how System Shock in particular was so seminal on its release. Without it we don't have things like Deus Ex, Dead Space etc.

As far as SS2 goes, I'd want to play it modded to eliminate the respawning and if not eliminate greatly tone down the weapon degradation. Also maybe improve the 3D models and textures. From what I understand there's a "refresh" from Nightdive in the works for that game too, but it'll probably be a while.

 

[zelmak]

OW2 development was an absolute clusterfuck; likely due to mismatch in vision between the team and upper management. It's basically turned out to be OW1 with some moderately impactful gameplay updates and a new seasonal monetisation model. AFAIK latest news is that they'll continue to release seasonal PvE events, but nothing like the big PvE campaign we were expecting.

I haven't played it much, but by all accounts the actual gameplay is solid and generally better than OW1, but the overpromising and change in business model have rubbed a lot of people in very much the wrong way.

I hope we get a Jason Schreier Anthem-style behind-the-scenes report on what the fuck happened with OW2. Blizzard has managed to pull WoW back into a great state and D4 is looking like a big win; but ooph things have clearly gone very wrong in the Overwatch team.

I would really like to see a podcast or youtube channel that discussed game dev similar to/in the style of how "it was a sh*t show" discusses the development of motion pictures. Does something like that exist?

 

[CuriouslySane]

I would really like to see a podcast or youtube channel that discussed game dev similar to/in the style of how "it was a sh*t show" discusses the development of motion pictures. Does something like that exist?

There's always DFA and PsychOdyssey.

 

[Nekojin]

Ah, I clearly didn't know that, so thanks. I'd only ever seen the name used in a Russian context in TV shows or films, and in those all the Sashas were male, so I assumed.*

As to Japanese names, let's see: Yoko (for obvious reasons) Yuka, Yuko, Yuki, Mariko, Sachiko... and that's about it for the girl's names. For boys, hmm: Noburo (or is it Nobuo), Hideo, Hideki, Hiro and I run out at that point. Gotta pay more attention.

BTW, what's the story with Nikita? I mean, the Western European world knows it from the Luc Besson film and its spinoffs, so we think of it as a woman's name, but is it in Russian?

Let's not forget the Dirty Pair Lovely Angels - Kei (typically a male name in Japan, although used much more commonly for girls since the 80's) and Yuri (typically a male name in Russia).

 

[Lt_Storm]

Oh man, I just assumed this turned into vaporware after not hearing any updates about it for so long. I’m not really into Pokemon but this is such a dystopian take on it I might have to get it.

I'm still not convinced it won't. After all, that studio has a history of abandoned functional but incomplete games. So who knows if it will ever reach something that could be described as complete.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Prey is a far better successor to System Shock than Bioshock ever was.

 

[malor]

As far as SS2 goes, I'd want to play it modded to eliminate the respawning and if not eliminate greatly tone down the weapon degradation. Also maybe improve the 3D models and textures. From what I understand there's a "refresh" from Nightdive in the works for that game too, but it'll probably be a while.

You can disable respawns with an INI edit, and once that's done, weapon degradation is much less of a problem. I think there may be some way to defeat that mechanic, but it's much less pressing when you can clear areas out and make them safe. I don't remember the specifics anymore, but as another mitigation, I'm pretty sure you can put points into weapon repair of some kind, so that degradation becomes manageable instead of life-threatening.

Just avoid the Psi path; even without respawns, it's exceedingly difficult. There aren't enough psi hypos in the game to take out even the fixed encounters. That whole skill tree is pretty much a waste of time. Finishing the game down that path is more for stunt Youtubers than real players.

(edit to add: probably all they had to do, to make Psi workable, would have been to let you regenerate psi points over time. Instead, you must use consumables for every point recovered, which makes it crazy hard.)

Prey is a far better successor to System Shock than Bioshock ever was.

Mechanically, Prey is a vastly better game. But Bioshock wins on showmanship.

 

[Dan Homerick]

Started Hob tonight, knowing absolutely nothing about it aside from recalling that Diabolical liked it. I didn't even look at the store page, didn't know the genre, who made it, anything.

It's pretty good!

 

[Frosty Grin]

Lies of P demo is apparently now live?

I wasn't going to game much. OK, maybe one demo. Six hours later...


Lies of P offers a big, meaty demo with two big bosses, a few minibosses and two-three proper soulslike levels. So it can take you many hours, and you don't want to put it down. What made it take longer was that the demo is significantly harder at high framerate - hopefully they'll fix it in time for release. They have about three months. And right now you can switch the game to 60 fps for the boss fights.

And one good thing about Lies of P is that it doesn't take super-powerful hardware to get high framerate. Even now it's one of the most optimized games in recent memory.

 

[Diabolical]

Started Hob tonight, knowing absolutely nothing about it aside from recalling that Diabolical liked it. I didn't even look at the store page, didn't know the genre, who made it, anything.

It's pretty good!

We'll need to talk later. That silly game took me by surprise, how much I enjoyed it!

 

[Diabolical]

I wasn't going to game much. OK, maybe one demo. Six hours later...


Lies of P offers a big, meaty demo with two big bosses, a few minibosses and two-three proper soulslike levels. So it can take you many hours, and you don't want to put it down. What made it take longer was that the demo is significantly harder at high framerate - hopefully they'll fix it in time for release. They have about three months. And right now you can switch the game to 60 fps for the boss fights.

And one good thing about Lies of P is that it doesn't take super-powerful hardware to get high framerate. Even now it's one of the most optimized games in recent memory.

Dope! I'm planning on trying out this weekend.
Maybe.
Hopefully?

I'm still deep into writing with every bit of my spare time, so I think I'll play some demos this weekend. But I thought I'd play Zelda this week, and that hasn't happened yet either.

 

[GloatingSwine]

You can disable respawns with an INI edit, and once that's done, weapon degradation is much less of a problem.

P. sure you can also directly alter the rate of weapon degradation in the same .cfg including setting it to 0.

The default rate is pretty silly. System Shock 2 is probably the far future of Breath of the Wild given that most guns all but break if you put a full magazine through them...

 

[Frosty Grin]

I'm still deep into writing with every bit of my spare time, so I think I'll play some demos this weekend. But I thought I'd play Zelda this week, and that hasn't happened yet either.

Yeah, time can be a problem. This is how I ended up playing Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood. Prioritized shorter games with middling reviews, so that I either finish it fast or drop it without second thoughts. I did end up enjoying it though. The only thing that really didn't work for me was the ending. Other than that it felt like a decent and mildly innovative retro (some say dated ) game.

 

[Diabolical]

The only thing that really didn't work for me was the ending. Other than that it felt like a decent and mildly innovative retro (some say dated ) game.

I would argue that the only thing that worked with WtA - Earthblood was the executable file that launched the game. And even that was hit or a miss.

 

[Apteris]

It's like showing up for a Dark Souls game now when there isn't anyone around to help with bosses and the only people left as invaders are sociopaths who do nothing but exploits. There's something special about launch weeks.

I've been meaning to ask someone about this: could I still play Demon's Souls today, if I wanted to? The original, PS3 version, I mean. Will it start, will it run?

 

[krimhorn]

It should run on the PS3. I believe it had the raid type things from later games that might be offline but the base game should run. It won't run on anything later (IIRC, there was a remake a year or two ago for PS5, I think).

 

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, it's fully functional single player, only bit that doesn't work is invasions and co-op.

(Oh and the thing where it averaged world tendency with the servers, just don't run around dying in body form, grab the cling ring and stay soul form).

 

[Elore]

Yeah, it's fully functional single player, only bit that doesn't work is invasions and co-op.

There is a fanmade server for the original Demon's Souls that is easy to connect to from a real PS3 by just changing DNS settings. It also has some handy new features that let you control your world tendency if you can't be arsed to do that the old-fashioned way, it's all explained in the link.

That said, if you want to play the original today and have a reasonably modern PC, I would recommend playing it via RPCS3 instead. It runs very well even on more modest systems, there's a 60fps patch available and load times are less of an issue.

 

[Apteris]

There is a fanmade server for the original Demon's Souls that is easy to connect to from a real PS3 by just changing DNS settings. It also has some handy new features that let you control your world tendency if you can't be arsed to do that the old-fashioned way, it's all explained in the link.

That said, if you want to play the original today and have a reasonably modern PC, I would recommend playing it via RPCS3 instead. It runs very well even on more modest systems, there's a 60fps patch available and load times are less of an issue.

Good tips both, thank you.

I have a Ryzen 7 3700X with an RTX 2070 Super, so I guess... an average PC?