General Gaming Thread 2024

[Bobfoc]

What's the Elusive Contract Arcade like? I never did the Elusive Contracts before because the "one failure and you can never, ever try again" format put me off.

[Maxx]

I haphazardly completed the two kills I needed but then got greedy trying to get into a safe.  I found the last document I needed to scan, but then some old woman got into an unending dialogue loop right in front of it.  Throw something to distract them?  They stop for a few seconds and begin again.  Try to scare them off by blowing up two nearby guards?  They run off, hallway swarms with security and when the heat dies down, they go right back to it.

So I shoot her in the head…she does not die, she runs off and security swarms again.  Heat dies down and she goes right fucking back to the dialogue loop, this time just talking to herself.   I throw a faberge egg at her head, that knocks her out but then security starts blasting and kills me.

😑

[Chris2K]

I'm enjoying Freelancer, but one failure seems to destroy everything you've done up to that point, which feels too harsh.

Case in point, I failed a Leader mission in Colorado because I got randomly spawned in the middle of the compound in my suit, and naturally got shot by all the hostile armed guards before I could do anything about it. Because of that I failed the mission, failed the syndicate thread, lost my gear I took with me (including a silenced pistol), lost half my merces and somehow even lost items I didn't take with me for good measure.

I'm now left with 900 merces, a variety of very loud shotguns that make you immediately notorious if taken as gear, and a hammer.

[FLiam]

IGN gave Hogwarts Legacy 9/10. 

This did make me chuckle though: 

 

[Bobfoc]

If you go purely by game scores, you'd think it was a masterpiece, but the reviews almost all mention the same problems. It's a good example of why putting stock in review scores alone is foolish.

[METALMAN]

I don’t want to spoil this for anyone but 

Spoiler

Dumbledore dies at the end and Snape does it 

 

[gunnar hendershow]

Games reviewers literally get death threats if they so much as even scratch the surface of proper criticism. It'd be like if Roger Ebert gave Armageddon 4 stars off the heels of the fact it was popular with people.

[METALMAN]

I'm going to be honest, regardless of whether Rowling is a dafty or whether the story is any good it looks at a glance that the game is one of those endless go into a dungeon and kill lots of beasties and those games are massive borefests. If I wanted to endlessly kill spiders in a cave with magic in a world that doesn't make any sense I could just play Skyrim.

[Bobfoc]

I'm quite sure review scores only exist now as clickbait, to stir up "engagement" (read: angry squabbles) in the comments section and so that publishers can use them in their marketing campaigns. As far as I know, most reviewers don't like having to use them. I can guarantee that any site that gives the next Zelda game anything other than a perfect score will be inundated with death threats and DDOS attacks, just like last time.

They also seem to have drifted to a point at which 7 out of 10 is considered average, so even the most generic and forgettable big-budget games tend to get that score slapped on them.

Another thing I've noticed is that, every so often, a story-driven game gets lavished with embarrassingly over-the-top praise. Look to the likes of GTA IV, Bioshock Infinite, Telltale's The Walking Dead and The Last of Us series as examples. Now, I'm not saying they aren't games loved by many people, but when reviewers hail them as the long-foretold coming of the thing that will finally convince the most ardent of sceptics that games are finally, and indisputably, works of high art, it all gets rather over-the-top.

It feels as though some people are so desperate to be there when gaming's "Citizen Kane moment" arrives that they can't help throwing out sentences like "In a medium where everything else is John Wick, The Last of Us Part 2 is Schindler's List" and "GTA IV gives us characters and a world with a level of depth previously unseen in gaming and elevates its story from a mere shoot-em-up to an Oscar-calibre drama". It's fine to love a game, but reel in the outlandish bollocks.

[METALMAN]

m8 GTA IV is the only GTA game that's actually good. Leave it alone.

[GoGo Yubari]

Yeah, it's worth keeping in mind that a lot of major games publications have scoring systems that are designed so the worst you could do with a triple-A game that is functionally made but completely unimaginative is like a 6.5/10, and that's before putting fandom goggles on. Also going to go out on a limb and say that the whole Rowling of it all means that a lot of the more savvy reviewers/publications won't be touching it with a ten-foot pole regardless.

[Dang117]

I watch Triple Jump which was originally started by Ben and Peter who left what culture not long after the cultaholic lads and they have a new presenter Ashton who presents a show about the months new releases, she glanced over Hogwarts Legacy which as you can imagine got alot of trolling comments aimed at her.

On the podcast they had to elaborate on why they won't be covering it which I honestly don't think anyone should have to defend why they don't want to cover this game. There will be genuine people with good morale compasses that will want to play the game but there will be others buying it to just because they believe they are 'sticking it to the left, who get offended over everything'. 

 

 

 

[gunnar hendershow]

5 hours ago, GoGo Yubari said:

Yeah, it's worth keeping in mind that a lot of major games publications have scoring systems that are designed so the worst you could do with a triple-A game that is functionally made but completely unimaginative is like a 6.5/10, and that's before putting fandom goggles on. Also going to go out on a limb and say that the whole Rowling of it all means that a lot of the more savvy reviewers/publications won't be touching it with a ten-foot pole regardless.

There's also a definite element of "well if it's fun how could it be bad?" that has always permeated gaming. So when people enjoy their time they're predisposed to believing it was with something good. But a critic is supposed to rise above that, and assess beyond just the simplistic and the superficial.

I think it's a good time to have these particular discussions since reviews and review scores are going to be widely looked at over the next few days.

[Skummy]

14 hours ago, damhausen said:

Games reviewers literally get death threats if they so much as even scratch the surface of proper criticism. It'd be like if Roger Ebert gave Armageddon 4 stars off the heels of the fact it was popular with people.

More than that, if they give a bad review to a major release from a big developer, they run the risk of not being given review copies of their next games, and the entire business model collapses, because websites like IGN need to get reviews out early otherwise they don't serve much purpose, and developers need those 9/10 scores on their box art and advertising.

There might be other explanations - video games could be argued as trickier to review than other media because of the interactivity element; if something is fun to play but in all other ways derivative and uninspired, do you mark them down for the lack of innovation, or mark them highly for the playability? 

There's a lot of grade inflation involved, and that ties into that point about the pressure to give high ratings. When was the last time you saw a website like IGN give a game 5/10? But surely 5/10 is an average score, so the majority of unremarkable games would fall somewhere around that. But we've basically been conditioned into thinking that a 7/10 is something you could take or leave, and that a 6/10 is probably awful, and a 9/10 just means "quite good".

It's all meaningless. I miss the days of buying Sega Power magazine and seeing that Cutthroat Island had been scored 12/100. 

[Colly]

I've not read a games review since PC Zone folded, and 7/10 was a decently playable game then. And Charlie Brooker didn't hold back.

[METALMAN]

I've got to admit I'm not as much of a gamer, but I've certainly noticed this trend in other areas. Back when I were a lad, the music press had a healthy scepticism towards major releases (admittedly this would often verge into outright hostility) but now they all like raving hysterically about how the latest release from Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Harry Style, Kendrick Lamar or Sam Smith is absolutely incredible and groundbreaking and five stars and we've never heard anything like this before. When in reality they are more likely to be absolutely fine but nothing too special and probably forgotten in a couple of years (aside from Sam Smith where it is going to be utterly boring miserable dreck)

Also again I dunno if it's the case in other media but the fall in the music press has led to a massive decline in the quality of music journalism from people who actually know about music. A typical review will be someone who doesn't know what an arpeggio is talking about arpeggios for a bit, something about "ominous synths", "throbbing bass" and "pounding drums" and then the rest of the review will be on the performer's position on various identity politics issues.

And I think you can attribute that to modern trends in access. Back then pop stars needed the magazines so had to up with shit. Now they’ve got their social media but the magazines/newspapers still need the pop stars:

And again, it's not just music. If I read an other piece from a two-bit political journalist referring to Francis Fukuyama or the Overton Window I'll ... do nothing because it's bloody inevitable.

[Bobfoc]

Apparently, Hogwarts Legacy has an NPC who is a trans girl. Obviously, that's a good thing in and of itself, but the nature of the conversation surrounding the game means that cynicism regarding the motives behind it is inevitable.

[stokeriño]

My intense disinterest in Hogwarts Legacy has been shifted into burning antipathy mainly by how much my ex-wife has been going on about how she wants to play as Hufflepuff.

[Skummy]

1 hour ago, METALMAN said:

I've got to admit I'm not as much of a gamer, but I've certainly noticed this trend in other areas. Back when I were a lad, the music press had a healthy scepticism towards major releases (admittedly this would often verge into outright hostility) but now they all like raving hysterically about how the latest release from Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Harry Style, Kendrick Lamar or Sam Smith is absolutely incredible and groundbreaking and five stars and we've never heard anything like this before. When in reality they are more likely to be absolutely fine but nothing too special and probably forgotten in a couple of years (aside from Sam Smith where it is going to be utterly boring miserable dreck)

Also again I dunno if it's the case in other media but the fall in the music press has led to a massive decline in the quality of music journalism from people who actually know about music. A typical review will be someone who doesn't know what an arpeggio is talking about arpeggios for a bit, something about "ominous synths", "throbbing bass" and "pounding drums" and then the rest of the review will be on the performer's position on various identity politics issues.

And I think you can attribute that to modern trends in access. Back then pop stars needed the magazines so had to up with shit. Now they’ve got their social media but the magazines/newspapers still need the pop stars:

And again, it's not just music. If I read an other piece from a two-bit political journalist referring to Francis Fukuyama or the Overton Window I'll ... do nothing because it's bloody inevitable.

A lot of this is the decline of journalism in general, between magazine and newspaper sales falling, and terrible management decisions - a lot of magazines like Q moved towards a really proprietary business model that would have driven away any decent established writer, while the NME instituted a policy that no reviewer was able to use their name or personal pronouns, everything had to be "The NME thinks...". There was this really idiotic trend toward "objectivity" from people who didn't realise the difference between journalism and criticism - the idea that a review should be objective and impersonal is nonsense.

Then there's the pivot to video, which I genuinely blame for much of the decline of western civilisation over the last ten years, particularly in terms of understanding criticism and media literacy and whatnot.

[King Ellis]

1 hour ago, Bobfoc said:

Apparently, Hogwarts Legacy has an NPC who is a trans girl. Obviously, that's a good thing in and of itself, but the nature of the conversation surrounding the game means that cynicism regarding the motives behind it is inevitable.

Called Sirona Ryan. Surprised they didn't call them Amanda.