Saturday!
Okay. I have beaten Mad Max
That said, if you are a fan of the good old fashioned sandbox where there are about a thousand things to do and every single one of them is on the map once you find the vantage point from which to see them… man, you realize that Mad Max was *MADE* for sandbox games. You drive around! You get in fights! You drive around! You encounter people! They give monologues! You get in fights! You drive around!
Now, if you’re not really into gameplay per se but you *LOVE* the universe of Mad Max: Fury Road
Not only will you spend the game hating (and gently correcting) the society created by Immortian Joe (and his son Scabrous Scrotus), you will spend a non-trivial amount of time finding artifacts from before (and during) the apocalypse itself. A picture of a small child and a puppy with the words “new doggie! couldn’t you just eat him up?” and you hear Max muse aloud “this was when dogs were pets and not food”. A picture of a bidet next to a toilet and Max wonders how much clean water we just wasted. A picture of a wedding and we hear Max ask “Didn’t I get married?”
Which brings me to something I’ve seen video games do that I rarely see done in movies (unless the movie is deliberately trying to make a particular point): the abject failure.
If you’ve seen Afro Samurai (an *AWESOME* cartoon), you remember the awesome scene where Afro fights Kuma on the mountain temple. Well, in the video game, there’s a scene where Afro says “you seen the show… but you and I both know that (events) didn’t go down like that.” And we go on to get a much, much *DARKER* resolution to the fight between Afro and Kuma.
It was actually pretty cool.
Anyway, the Mad Max game does something similar. Not really in contrast to the movie but as an exploration of a deeper theme. (Warning: Spoilers for both the game and the movie follow) Max meets a couple of people who remind him of his wife and daughter, fights against doing anything to help them with every sinew, eventually gives in and helps them and tries to protect them… and he *FAILS*. He fails *HARD*. Now, I suppose that this is mirrored in the Fury Road movie by the death of the pregnant Angharad… another woman and child that Max fails to protect… In any case, the scene depicted in the video game is much, much darker than the somewhat similar scene in the movie. The illusion of agency that the game gives up until this point makes the failure much more of a punch to the gut.
Anyway, the game continues using the failure as a bit of impetus for Max to re-find solace in his madness but not before getting a hot steaming ladleful of Revenge.
And it makes me look forward to the next game (and movie… whichever comes first) all the more.
Maybe there won’t be a failure quite this significant, next time.
So… what are you playing?
(Picture is “Untitled” by our very own Will Truman. Used with permission.)
I finally picked up Pillars of Eternity on a Steam sale last weekend and I’ve been very, very slowly hacking my way through that. I’ve never really played a game like this before, and I’m still having a hard time figuring out the combat side of things (I get killed a LOT). Honestly, it’s a little embarrassing, because I’m playing on Easy and I’m still getting whupped.Report
Don’t fight the bear, dude.Report
That bear from back near the beginning? Nah, I killed that thing a while ago, it wasn’t so bad. It was mostly fighting through Raedric’s guys and trying to delve deeper into the Endless Paths that kept getting me killed. I finally defeated Raedric last night, but how high of a level should I try to get to before I delve into the deeper parts of the Paths? Last time I tried, my party got massacred by those damn ogres.Report
I may or may not have put that game aside for after I have a week off to play it.
So I pretty much stopped after I killed the bear.Report
@zac
I find the Infinity Engine style combat frustrating. It is designed so as to require strategic thinking, you are expected to carefully direct your characters. But it is in real-time, and although you can pause to issue commands you still end up feeling pressured for time.
For me it’s the worst of both worlds – either make the combat turn-based like the old Fallout titles, or make a more action-oriented combat system like modern Bioware titlesReport
I’m interested in a brand new (out of early access this last Wednesday) indie 2-player co-op game called “Clandestine”.
It’s set in a 90s spy thriller, but it looks like the gameplay is lifted straight from “Max Headroom”. The “Edison” player moves around in the real world, trying to accomplish stuff without getting killed or captured or both. The “Theora” player sits on a computer back at base and accesses floor plans, identifies guards, messes with video cameras, undoes electronic locks…
Unfortunately, the dude I usually play co-op with (we started on LAN multiplayer with Hexen in the mid-90s – I upgraded my PC from 4MB to 8MB[*] so that I could host) has been playing XCOM Long War in what little time he has, and my WoW friends don’t even log on at this point in the expansion…Report
I’m playing Diablo 3, mostly just killing time until Fallout 4 comes out.Report
Same here, finishing up the DLC thingies in Arkham knight, just waiting.Report
I’ve been waffling on whether or not to buy FO4 for the launch. On one hand, Bethesda has a bit of a reputation for bugs, and the game will likely be more stable in a couple months and after a few patches. On the other hand, I’m off Wednesday, and my wife and kid are out of the house. Decisions, decisions…
I’m approaching 100 hours in Witcher 3. The scripted quests are well done and non-repetitive and I’m enjoying them very much. I am, however, getting tired of the inventory management aspect of most modern RPGs. Younger me would probably be horrified hearing me say that. That and the whole ‘take everything that isn’t nailed down’ mentality. Yes, it’s not an absolutely requirement and I could bypass it, but then I risk missing out on gear or, in W3, missing out on the singular copy of a particular alchemic formula that exists in this region, that is located in a nondescript supply crate in an abandon sewer. Of course.
FO4 will likely only make this worse, as they aim to make loot junk actually useful. We’ll see how successful they are.Report
One of the things the previous two installments of Fallout taught me is that I am a hoarder at heart. Hearing that the junk loot will now be useful elates and terrifies in equal measure.Report
I played with some of the mods for FO3 for a while. One (or more) of them allowed you to craft and/or repair using some previously useless junk. I ended up afraid to get rid of most of it for fear it would be useful later and had lockers full of crap at my house in Megaton.Report
I don’t know how to not collect loot junk if it’s actually useful.
That was the only thing that protected me before.
What if I get halfway through the game and I’m going to need 15 forks???? I AM GOING TO HAVE TO START COLLECTING THEM.
They let you buy houses, right? One in each town? You can keep your forks there?Report
Dude, we are so screwed.Report
Hardcore mode, for New Vegas, actually helped.
“I do not use .22 ammo. I have not touched a .22 weapon since the first 45 minutes of the game. I… I will not buy it.”
And I didn’t.Report
Ha. Meanwhile, *I* had a mod that let me take apart bullets and whatnot into primer, gunpowder, and shell casings.
That…was not helpful to my carrying capacity. But I just dumped most of it in the containers next to the weapon workbench in…the first town, blanking on the name.
Everything. I will collect everything. I mean it.
Granted, that’s actually much easier in a game like Fallout, where you can constantly just fast travel back home and then back.
Fallout 3 drove me crazy requiring two transitions to get into my home…so of course Fallout New Vegas made it *even more*. Just let us fast travel *into* our house, dammit. Why is that so hard? The Old World Blues DLC let us do it!Report
Ha. Meanwhile, *I* had a mod that let me take apart bullets and whatnot into primer, gunpowder, and shell casings.
That was standard in New Vegas. Or were you talking about 3?
Really, carrying capacity just isn’t a fun game mechanic. It would be one thing if it actually made the game more difficult, but in most games the marginal combat/survival utility of additional items drops to near zero long before you reach capacity. The limit is purely an inconvenience.Report
That was standard in New Vegas. Or were you talking about 3?
No, talking about NV. That was standard? Okay, I could have sworn I had a mod to do that…or maybe it did something else with the ammo. I can’t even remember now.
Maybe I had a mod in 3, and then it was built into NV?
Really, carrying capacity just isn’t a fun game mechanic. It would be one thing if it actually made the game more difficult, but in most games the marginal combat/survival utility of additional items drops to near zero long before you reach capacity. The limit is purely an inconvenience.
No kidding. I’ve been trying to make my way through Dragon Age. I have a mod (and this I know is a mod) that expands your pack *as if* you’ve bought all 5 or whatever backpacks in the game, and I have the expansion that actually gives you a damn storage area, and I *still* find myself having to actively manage things…and it’s a lot worst than in Fallout, because it’s not an open world, so I have to trek back to the start of the area, go to my campsite to sell things, and then head back.
At least in Fallout you can just wait until you’re somewhere you can fast travel to (And if you’re finding loot, it usually is.) and leave and come back really quickly. And, worst case scenario where you don’t want to or can’t leave, you can just cram stuff in a single container and come back later for it.
At one point in Fallout (Either 3 or NV, I forget), I had an awesome mod. It was a person you could summon, give her all the stuff you didn’t want, and she’d run off and sell it. And it worked in a fairly realistic manner. (Once you ignored the fact that she could magically find you and travel safely around without anyone killing her.) She took time to sell stuff, and she took a cut and gave you the rest when you summoned her again.
I’m hoping the new Fallout has something like that. What people don’t realize is that the games just sorta keep stealing the mods from the previous games…the hardcore mod where you had to eat and drink was from a mod from the previous game, like I said I think maybe the disassembling bullet thing also was, in 4 we’re getting the ability to build a settlement, apparently, and that was a mod from NV…Report
@davidtc
I think that was a “perk” you could select during your leveling up process.Report
Right now it’s slowly dawning on @davidtc that the guy he paid $20 to mod New Vegas totally ripped him off.Report
Beware of playing Thief then, some loot is really, really hard to find.
For completionists only, one can finish the missions without getting every last bit of loot.Report
System Shock had a whole minigame about inventory management. Made it fun, and made you not have to collect every single thing in the game…Report
Was that the suitcase thing? You only had so many cells in the suitcase and so you pretty much had to play inventory tetris?
I love that particular way of doing it, actually. When they make the “would you like an extra row of cells? An extra column?” upgrade available, it changes everything all over again and I immediately throw away all of the cash I had been saving for this or that weapon away on JUST ONE MORE ROW.Report
Exactly! It’s a great way of convincing players that they don’t need every single weapon magazine in the entire game.
I’d play more FPS if they were more like System Shock. Got any recommendations?
Really, I like games that encourage different playstyles…Report
Resident Evil 4 isn’t quite FPS, but it’s over the shoulder and, dang, it’s awesome.
And if you liked 4, you’ll love 5 if you can get past the baffling artistic decisions.Report
I never played System Shock, but I enjoyed this in the new Deus Ex. Inventory management is interesting IFF it places real restrictions on gameplay; in games where most of your inventory is for selling at the next town, it’s pretty pointless.Report
Oh my gosh.
It’s full of stars.Report