I started with Driver: San Francisco today. I loved the very first Driver on the PS1, but didn't play any other games in the series. The game seems to be cool, though the Out of Body card switching mechanic is rather bizarre.
I do have to say that Ubisoft can go fuck itself though. Their DRM rendered this game almost unplayable by causing the game to freeze for 15 seconds like once a minute. Had to shut off my internet connection to solve this problem.
Super Monday Night Combat is pretty fun. It's a kind of MOBA / TF2 hybrid, but with one key difference; new players aren't a total liability.
Killing bots is of primary importance to victory, since the game is ended by killing the other teams "money ball" (see Ancient in Dota) and to do that it must have its shield dropped by bots (this cannot be accomplished by players).
Player death also isn't that big a deal: you drop some money that the enemies can pick up but the respawn time is only about 15 seconds.
Since you don't have to worry about things like last hitting or items, you don't have to master fiddly skills just to be competent; a newbie can just mow down bots like it was a singleplayer game and take pot shots at players to get assists.
There's also a pretty high skill cap since you are using FPS skills and not auto locking or orb walking or anything like that (weapons are ray cast or projectiles) and I could see Super MNC being a pretty solid competitive game (insert Free 2 Play whine here).
I've only played solo match making and it's been pretty painless. Games are only about 15 - 20 min long so even if you get trounced it isn't the death by 1000 cuts that Dota can turn into.
There is a little bit of stateful metagame stuff, with products that you unlock in games and endorsements that act like LoL runes but for the most part it is similar to TF2; you can get buffs but they also come with debuffs. There's probably some imba in there but it feels like FPS skills and teamwork can overcome broken builds. There's also a mode where you don't use any of that stuff and there is no character progression in the matches; everyone is just max level from the get go.
It is free to play but I picked up a $5 starting kit that included about half of the characters and it seems like you'll be able to unlock other characters every 10-12 games if your win/lose is about 1:1 with your winnings (or you can buy them for max $10 but I wouldn't).
There's also a pretty high skill cap since you are using FPS skills and not [...] orb walking
What do you mean with this exactly? That orb walking lowers the skill required to play?
Nope, mistake. "Orb walking" was supposed to be in the first sentence of the previous paragraph when talking about mastering fiddly skills to be competent at Dota. Sloppy copy-pasta.
Since you don't have to worry about things like last hitting
As long as you hit something once, you get the experience for it if you or a teammate kill it, however, this still means that you're trying to make sure you're in a lane or the jungle and not roaming like a normal FPS/TPS. This means that there's still a noob liability factor. I'm willing to bet you're low enough level that you're not getting matched with the really good people, but when you get higher, it's just a nightmare, a bad player or two on your team, or even a bad pro selection, will make the game twice as hard for your team. For me at least, it seems almost as bad as LOL in that respect at the higher levels. It's why I seldom play the game any more.
As long as you hit something once, you get the experience for it if you or a teammate kill it, however, this still means that you're trying to make sure you're in a lane or the jungle and not roaming like a normal FPS/TPS. This means that there's still a noob liability factor.
That why I say a noob isn't a total liability.
In most MOBAs you're literally better off with an empty slot than a bad player.
That's also why I make a direct comparison to TF2 and not just FPS in general; you need to be fighting where the fighting is and trying to do what you're good at, not just bunny hoping and trying to click on heads.
I'm not saying the game is easy, just that is it is easier to get into and the important mechanics are more understandable. If anything, high level SMNC would be much harder than LOL.
One of the things I got with the starter pack was an XP boost but I've actually seen a few different people saying not to use it at first as you will quickly be thrown out of your depth.
Nope, mistake. "Orb walking" was supposed to be in the first sentence of the previous paragraph when talking about mastering fiddly skills to be competent at Dota. Sloppy copy-pasta.
Orb walking is not much different from bunny hopping, rocket/grenade/wall jumping, skiing when it was still a bug, hell, twitch shooting too. The entire genre of competitive shooting is horribly dependant on mastering fiddling with the keyboard and mouse. It's no different in that regard from competitive DotA.
Nope, mistake. "Orb walking" was supposed to be in the first sentence of the previous paragraph when talking about mastering fiddly skills to be competent at Dota. Sloppy copy-pasta.
Orb walking is not much different from bunny hopping, rocket/grenade/wall jumping, skiing when it was still a bug, hell, twitch shooting too. The entire genre of competitive shooting is horribly dependant on mastering fiddling with the keyboard and mouse. It's no different in that regard from competitive DotA.
This is true. Though I am awful at them, I don't think MOBAs are bad or stupid for demanding players learn new skills that don't necessarily carry over from or to other games like some people around here.
Like I said before, I don't think SMNC is easy, just easier to get into that other MOBAs if you've got some FPS skills (which probably most people interested in competitive games on PC have in some degree).
This is true. Though I am awful at them, I don't think MOBAs are bad or stupid for demanding players learn new skills that don't necessarily carry over from or to other games like some people around here.
Like I said before, I don't think SMNC is easy, just easier to get into that other MOBAs if you've got some FPS skills (which probably most people interested in competitive games on PC have in some degree).
My problem was with you saying you think SMNC could make a competitive game, with the argument that it has no fiddly skills requirement to your knowledge. Which is odd, so I pointed out that a lot of popular competitive games have fiddly stuff. It's a weird argument you made.
As for the game, I heard it does have some less obvious stuff hidden in spots. Haven't confirmed what and if it's true though. When I heard that I made a small connection to Pokémon games which is also stupidly easy for new people, but has several things hidden to make it easy for new people, while more advanced people can spend more time on it.
What I was trying to say is that you don't need to master new skills you've never had to develop before or memorize vast amounts of trivia to merely participate in a meaningful way when you start out but that there was still plenty of mechanical and tactical depth to make the game worth playing at a higher level.
In other news, A Valley without Wind could very well turn into my next Terraria-style obsession.
It's basically procedurally generated Metroidvania Dark Cloud w/ loot. Videos make the platforming and combat look kind of janky and slippy but the feel of the game is actually very nice (I'm playing with mouse and keyboard).
In other news, A Valley without Wind could very well turn into my next Terraria-style obsession.
I'm waiting for Starbound. 'Randomly' generated everything. Also declaring whole planets as your home.
What I was trying to say is that you don't need to master new skills you've never had to develop before or memorize vast amounts of trivia to merely participate in a meaningful way when you start out but that there was still plenty of mechanical and tactical depth to make the game worth playing at a higher level.
You did. I just found your argumentation silly and weird. You also don't need to 'master' a new skill in DotA-likes. It's till just clicking on a target.
Finally beat Borderlands on co-op last night. Now, just the DLC content. I guess the only way to access it is to teleport to a certain area? I'm a bit confused.
Also, the end game boss wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. If anything, I look forward to the sequel this fall.
Amnesia is pretty fun, but I'm already tired of the "HEY, THERE'S A THING HERE, BUT YOU NEED ANOTHER THING TO USE IT" text that pops up everywhere. The game assumes its players are morons.
Amnesia is pretty fun, but I'm already tired of the "HEY, THERE'S A THING HERE, BUT YOU NEED ANOTHER THING TO USE IT" text that pops up everywhere. The game assumes its players are morons.
Isn't that pretty much every game now? Oblivion, Fallout 3, FNV, Skyrim, etc. Every goal oriented game is like this. "Here's what you need to do now in excruciating detail so that you never have to deduce anything or feel like you've accomplished anything."
Amnesia is pretty fun, but I'm already tired of the "HEY, THERE'S A THING HERE, BUT YOU NEED ANOTHER THING TO USE IT" text that pops up everywhere. The game assumes its players are morons.
Isn't that pretty much every game now? Oblivion, Fallout 3, FNV, Skyrim, etc. Every goal oriented game is like this. "Here's what you need to do now in excruciating detail so that you never have to deduce anything or feel like you've accomplished anything."
On the one hand, I completely agree that games telling you what to do in plain text is pretty stupid. See the Sequelitis video on Mega Man X.
However, I am playing Oblivion thanks to Steam Summer Sale. Yes, it often tells you what to do in English, which is annoying. However, there are occasions when it does not tell you what to do. In these cases there is a problem. Let me tell you an example.
I was questing, and my next step was to get this helmet. I could see the helmet, but couldn't reach it. The red quest compass arrow was pointing right at it, but it was too high to reach. Obviously there was some way to go around. I found one unexplored path, and thought that might be the way to go, but it might not be. The arrow was pointing behind me. If it was the wrong way, it would be a huge waste of time to go in there. My only options were to risk wasting my time, or check a FAQ.
If the game didn't have the text or the red arrow I would have gone in there using a method of explore every path. But at the same time, the game overall would be infuriatingly boring and take forever. Without text and the helpful red arrow and FAQs, it would become Ultima: Quest for the Avatar where you have no fucking clue what you are supposed to do or where to go, get bored, and quit in two seconds.
I disagree that it's possible to "waste your time" in an adventure/exploration game, but I do agree that the advent of the compass pip was the end of decent adventure gaming. Devs and writers have gotten mega lazy now that they can just make you follow a dot. No need for clues, context, deduction, meaningful NPC interaction, etc. Just receive quest, follow dot, complete quest.
The time wasting feeling comes when the illusion of a complex world falls away.
Case in point: Fallout 3. I was deeply immersed when I first left the vault and started exploring. But, once it was obvious that the vast majority of the landscape was noninteractive and effectively empty, overland travel turned immediately from delightful journey into "hold walk wasting time." It'd might as well have been Wind Waker sailing.
The time wasting feeling comes when the illusion of a complex world falls away.
Case in point: Fallout 3. I was deeply immersed when I first left the vault and started exploring. But, once it was obvious that the vast majority of the landscape was noninteractive and effectively empty, overland travel turned immediately from delightful journey into "hold walk wasting time." It'd might as well have been Wind Waker sailing.
Wow, I had a completely different experience. I felt that way in FNV, but in FO3 I never once used Fast Travel because everything was so damned INTERESTING. I agree that the environment wasn't terribly interactive but there was so much to SEE. Just the arrangement of set pieces was incredibly interesting. I loved playing archaeologist at every abandoned hut, and more than half of them paid off in that way. Or it seemed like it.
Im a big fan of things like fast travel and waypoints in rpgs, mostly cause I dont actually want to spend that much time playing any one single game. Oddly enough though, Dark Souls is probably my favorite game?? I guess I like the unguided wandering/exploration thing only when its done well, and not necessarily for every single game.
I disagree that it's possible to "waste your time" in an adventure/exploration game, but I do agree that the advent of the compass pip was the end of decent adventure gaming. Devs and writers have gotten mega lazy now that they can just make you follow a dot. No need for clues, context, deduction, meaningful NPC interaction, etc. Just receive quest, follow dot, complete quest.
I would enjoy the unguided exploration, but only if the world is dense, and I can move at a reasonable speed. Reasonable speed is Quake speed or Tribes speed, so really fast. Dense means that no matter where you go, there is something to work with. Think about Zelda where there is something relevant to do on every screen.
The main problem is that these are multi-quest games. If you explore, you can find all sorts of awesome things all over the place. But many of those things will be completely useless or out of context because they are for some other quest that you might not even know about yet. Sometimes you end up in a place where characters talk to you about something you have never heard of. In New Vegas I met this robot who said he met me before, even though I had never met him because I must have missed him earlier.
The games that do well with exploration are the ones with one and only one quest, or at least only one quest at a time. I'm talking about Zelda, Metroid, and Castlevania. You explore and you find lots of stuff. You might not know exactly what everything is right away, but you know it is relevant to your goal, since you have only one goal. When you have multiple goals, most of which you don't even know yet, most of the stuff you come across is a complete waste of time even if you can fast travel. And when you can't fast travel the time wasting rises exponentially.
I don't know if the multi-quest thing is the issue, but I'm not sure how to articulate my opinion on this. :-)
I agree that when multiple quests overlap and poor flagging causes out of context dialog or spoilers to occur, that's bad, but that's poor design/coding/writing, not a necessary consequence of multiple quest environments.
I'm also fine with a moderately dense world. If there's an acre in game of nothing but trees, streams, and animals with not a single NPC or quest item, I'm fine with that as long as the environment is convincing.
The time wasting feeling comes when the illusion of a complex world falls away.
Case in point: Fallout 3. I was deeply immersed when I first left the vault and started exploring. But, once it was obvious that the vast majority of the landscape was noninteractive and effectively empty, overland travel turned immediately from delightful journey into "hold walk wasting time." It'd might as well have been Wind Waker sailing.
Wow, I had a completely different experience. I felt that way in FNV, but in FO3 I never once used Fast Travel because everything was so damned INTERESTING. I agree that the environment wasn't terribly interactive but there was so much to SEE. Just the arrangement of set pieces was incredibly interesting. I loved playing archaeologist at every abandoned hut, and more than half of them paid off in that way. Or it seemed like it.
In Fallout 3 I used fast travel only once I knew I had been through a certain area and all I had to do was get past it. They actually did a good job of putting enough dugeons in that game to where walking around wasn't as painful as it is in some other games. The difference between Fallout and Elder Scrolls games is that there are less buildings on the horizon, fewer noticeable landmarks. Every time I saw a building I was like hey gonna go explore that shit. Why, because there was almost always computers in the building or notes that had some inkling of what was happening in the building before it was blown to smithereens. I felt like I was learning what the world was before cataclysm. Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, and even Fallout New Vegas all suffer from this. There is surprisingly little going on outside of the quests in Fallout NV, at least from my experience with it so far. If I wasn't fast travelling in those other games then I was just covering territory for the sake of it, which to me is not fun.
In New Vegas I met this robot who said he met me before, even though I had never met him because I must have missed him earlier.
Comments
I do have to say that Ubisoft can go fuck itself though. Their DRM rendered this game almost unplayable by causing the game to freeze for 15 seconds like once a minute. Had to shut off my internet connection to solve this problem.
Killing bots is of primary importance to victory, since the game is ended by killing the other teams "money ball" (see Ancient in Dota) and to do that it must have its shield dropped by bots (this cannot be accomplished by players).
Player death also isn't that big a deal: you drop some money that the enemies can pick up but the respawn time is only about 15 seconds.
Since you don't have to worry about things like last hitting or items, you don't have to master fiddly skills just to be competent; a newbie can just mow down bots like it was a singleplayer game and take pot shots at players to get assists.
There's also a pretty high skill cap since you are using FPS skills and not auto locking or orb walking or anything like that (weapons are ray cast or projectiles) and I could see Super MNC being a pretty solid competitive game (insert Free 2 Play whine here).
I've only played solo match making and it's been pretty painless. Games are only about 15 - 20 min long so even if you get trounced it isn't the death by 1000 cuts that Dota can turn into.
There is a little bit of stateful metagame stuff, with products that you unlock in games and endorsements that act like LoL runes but for the most part it is similar to TF2; you can get buffs but they also come with debuffs. There's probably some imba in there but it feels like FPS skills and teamwork can overcome broken builds. There's also a mode where you don't use any of that stuff and there is no character progression in the matches; everyone is just max level from the get go.
It is free to play but I picked up a $5 starting kit that included about half of the characters and it seems like you'll be able to unlock other characters every 10-12 games if your win/lose is about 1:1 with your winnings (or you can buy them for max $10 but I wouldn't).
In most MOBAs you're literally better off with an empty slot than a bad player.
That's also why I make a direct comparison to TF2 and not just FPS in general; you need to be fighting where the fighting is and trying to do what you're good at, not just bunny hoping and trying to click on heads.
I'm not saying the game is easy, just that is it is easier to get into and the important mechanics are more understandable. If anything, high level SMNC would be much harder than LOL.
One of the things I got with the starter pack was an XP boost but I've actually seen a few different people saying not to use it at first as you will quickly be thrown out of your depth.
Like I said before, I don't think SMNC is easy, just easier to get into that other MOBAs if you've got some FPS skills (which probably most people interested in competitive games on PC have in some degree).
As for the game, I heard it does have some less obvious stuff hidden in spots. Haven't confirmed what and if it's true though. When I heard that I made a small connection to Pokémon games which is also stupidly easy for new people, but has several things hidden to make it easy for new people, while more advanced people can spend more time on it.
In other news, A Valley without Wind could very well turn into my next Terraria-style obsession.
It's basically procedurally generated Metroidvania Dark Cloud w/ loot. Videos make the platforming and combat look kind of janky and slippy but the feel of the game is actually very nice (I'm playing with mouse and keyboard).
Even when it was out for SNES, I preferred to play the non-X Mega Mans.
Also, the end game boss wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. If anything, I look forward to the sequel this fall.
However, I am playing Oblivion thanks to Steam Summer Sale. Yes, it often tells you what to do in English, which is annoying. However, there are occasions when it does not tell you what to do. In these cases there is a problem. Let me tell you an example.
I was questing, and my next step was to get this helmet. I could see the helmet, but couldn't reach it. The red quest compass arrow was pointing right at it, but it was too high to reach. Obviously there was some way to go around. I found one unexplored path, and thought that might be the way to go, but it might not be. The arrow was pointing behind me. If it was the wrong way, it would be a huge waste of time to go in there. My only options were to risk wasting my time, or check a FAQ.
If the game didn't have the text or the red arrow I would have gone in there using a method of explore every path. But at the same time, the game overall would be infuriatingly boring and take forever. Without text and the helpful red arrow and FAQs, it would become Ultima: Quest for the Avatar where you have no fucking clue what you are supposed to do or where to go, get bored, and quit in two seconds.
Case in point: Fallout 3. I was deeply immersed when I first left the vault and started exploring. But, once it was obvious that the vast majority of the landscape was noninteractive and effectively empty, overland travel turned immediately from delightful journey into "hold walk wasting time." It'd might as well have been Wind Waker sailing.
The main problem is that these are multi-quest games. If you explore, you can find all sorts of awesome things all over the place. But many of those things will be completely useless or out of context because they are for some other quest that you might not even know about yet. Sometimes you end up in a place where characters talk to you about something you have never heard of. In New Vegas I met this robot who said he met me before, even though I had never met him because I must have missed him earlier.
The games that do well with exploration are the ones with one and only one quest, or at least only one quest at a time. I'm talking about Zelda, Metroid, and Castlevania. You explore and you find lots of stuff. You might not know exactly what everything is right away, but you know it is relevant to your goal, since you have only one goal. When you have multiple goals, most of which you don't even know yet, most of the stuff you come across is a complete waste of time even if you can fast travel. And when you can't fast travel the time wasting rises exponentially.
I agree that when multiple quests overlap and poor flagging causes out of context dialog or spoilers to occur, that's bad, but that's poor design/coding/writing, not a necessary consequence of multiple quest environments.
I'm also fine with a moderately dense world. If there's an acre in game of nothing but trees, streams, and animals with not a single NPC or quest item, I'm fine with that as long as the environment is convincing.