Don’t Think, Just Jam

  • 54 Posts
  • 135 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: November 25th, 2023

help-circle








  • I really like checking out oldies in their original form, even if there’s a “better” remake/remaster available. It’s fun to see what those games had to offer in their prime.

    As for Cyberpunk, I’m playing both the most up to date version (2.13 with Phantom Liberty + mods) and the legacy one (version 1.16).

    There were a lot of gameplay and design changes in the 2.0 release. Since I played the game before that, I had a constant reaction of some things being… off. I wasn’t sure whether my mixed feelings had to do with nostalgia or if I really liked some of the old gameplay more, so I decided to reinstall the legacy version to confirm (thanks CDPR for keeping it available).

    Long story short, while I do like some of the things they did with the game and genuinely believe it’s a better product overall, I’d be lying if I said I prefer the new version. I still have fun and all the technical improvements, free content and access to mods make for an easy choice but boy do I wish there was a way to port those to the legacy version. There are a few mods that restore some of the old design choices which gives me a sliver of hope for a potential larger restoration in the future. For now though, I’ll just keep enjoying what’s there.








  • I currently doing a playthrough funnily enough, didn’t realize it was so close to an anniversary.

    I’ve been spending more time exploring and doing side activities this time around, just driving around and taking photos. It ended up being quite a surprising experience. I was surprised with how easy the game is, how fast the story moves or how empty some parts of the world are (makes sense considering when it released). Taking the world in a more touristy way was an interesting change compared to how I experienced those games before. It’s also a way of playing I’ve been trying to move towards more and more recently (doing the same with Cyberpunk as well).

    I still think it’s a great game but IV and, to lesser extent, Vice City are probably my favorites as far as mainline games are concerned. IV especially as it had a nice grounded approach to gameplay with weighty movement, interactions and driving, as well as the story - it sucks most people hated this as GTAV ended up being a rather mid experience for me.



  • I only properly played 1, 2 and a bit of Black Flag but based on that and what I’ve seen from all the other games I’m gonna stick with the first one.

    Investigations were… well actual investigation, gameplay mechanics while simple and satisfying weren’t overly automated and the game wasn’t burdened with all the bloat that came afterwards. Simplified movement system from later games, one that’s fighting you whenever you try to do something even a little out of game’s comfort zone, is probably my major sticking point with the series.

    That said, I’m not sure if that would be the best choice for you. If you want to try the classic approach I’d suggest going with the Ezio trilogy (II, Brotherhood, Revelations) as these games are more polished, if a little bloated, compared to the first game. They should still hold up well enough to have fun.



  • I think an important step would be to not be afraid of creating characters with actual… well, character. It was somewhat mentioned in the video but it seems like devs are unwilling to make NPCs with their own likes and dislikes, ones that might disagree with players instead of being all over them no matter what. This might be a slight exaggeration but boy do I wish we had more “real” feeling NPCs in games. I’m sure I’m not the only one who couldn’t care less about being the most important being in the universe and would rather be treated as an equal part of the world.

    From a mechanical standpoint, relationship system in Scarlet Hollow feels like a good step into making interactions more natural (here is a detailed look by one of the devs) but I realize it’s a lot of work for something a good chunk of players won’t care about. I understand why this isn’t something many (especially bigger) devs would be interested in using but it’s still a disappointment.

    Maybe AI will be able to help somewhat with this problem in the future but I’m not going to hold my breath on that.



  • Can’t say I share your experience with either game but I can understand it doesn’t work for everyone. Personally, I can’t really imaging playing this, Kao the Kangaroo or old Tomb Raider titles without tank controls for example.

    To be clear, your comment is exactly what I meant - you tried and don’t like it, that’s absolutely fine. There’s plenty of games I couldn’t get into due to controls or mechanics so I feel you. On the other hand, I met people who refuse to even try to engage with certain mechanics and that’s what I’m not a fan of. I’m all for remakes/remasters/rereleases updating things to let more people enjoy the old thing and hope this will be the case with Croc. And hey, even if they change something in a way I don’t like, there’s always* the classic version.

    * Though not always an official way to get it.


  • Ah, I thought people had some specific issues besides the game having tank controls. Fair enough.

    I’m not going to begrudge someone for not liking a control scheme (unless their only reason is not wanting to learn how to play differently) but I do think some people dislike it without even giving it a fair shake. The thing is, these games were designed with this control scheme in mind and switching to a modern one can be detrimental to the experience (compare playing REmake with and without tank controls, the latter makes navigation and avoiding enemies much easier).

    Oh well, everyone has their own dislikes.

    Edit: I read a bit more and apparently the game always had an option to play with some kind of “modern” controls when using a controller with sticks? I’m guessing they’ll probably polish those.