The Video Game thread

[MrNovember]

So Outer Worlds is fantastic! I'm focusing on sneak and persuasion and it's making for such a fun playthrough. I love that you can talk your way out of most situations.

It's everything I miss from the Fallout series. It has also shown me how shit the Fallout series has become.

[calfzilla]

So Outer Worlds is fantastic! I'm focusing on sneak and persuasion and it's making for such a fun playthrough. I love that you can talk your way out of most situations.

It's everything I miss from the Fallout series. It has also shown me how shit the Fallout series has become.

Which fallout did you stop liking it? I started with 3 and really enjoyed the combat... didn't like what they changed in NV and 4.

[MrNovember]

I started with 3 as well, but probably put the most time into NV. I enjoyed 4, but it didn't feel like anything new. Just the same old formula. I lost all hope when 76 was announced and will never play that game. I also really don't foresee Bethesda turning the ship around anytime soon; I just read up on some of their recent changes and can't muster more than a head shake (fairly NSFW language ahead, but: http://www.falloutfirst.com)

Outer Worlds feels like what Fallout 4 could have/should have been. There's a lot more focus on interesting NPCs, dialogue, and story. I actually feel compelled to talk to everyone and to bring companions along to get to know them. Combat mostly feels good too, although I'm not really focusing on it and I haven't gotten the hang of the companion commands.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Combat in all the 3D fallouts has been terrible. New Vegas was great for having so much great stuff in that I could get around that. I'd be hoping for the same from outer worlds

[Olin]

Disco Elysium is not only the best game I've played this year but one of the best games I've ever played in my life.
The Outer Worlds was an enormous disappointment (overwhelmingly shallow everything) that I wanted to like because Obsidian, but it's just not the same Obsidian at all.
Moderately excited to finally play RDR2 now that it's on PC.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Care to elaborate on the outer worlds problems? As someone who very much wants more "classic obsidian"

[MrNovember]

I've heard playing Disco Elysium ruins Outer Worlds somewhat because of how good Disco Elysium is.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Oh I hadn't heard of that game at all but it sounds very interesting

[Olin]

I've heard playing Disco Elysium ruins Outer Worlds somewhat because of how good Disco Elysium is.

There's a good article on that actually, sums up a lot of how I feel quite well: http://www.pcgamer.com/disco-elysium-ha ... ds-for-me/
I am quite a bit more critical with The Outer Worlds than the guy who wrote that article, but I would recommend Disco Elysium to pretty much everyone, maybe even especially people who don't particularly like games.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Well that sure made me want to play Disco Elysium instead. Lol.

Oh, looks like no controller support? That's a no from ruined-wrists me.

[Olin]

Well that sure made me want to play Disco Elysium instead. Lol.

Oh, looks like no controller support? That's a no from ruined-wrists me.

I actually completely missed your earlier question asking what was wrong with TOW.

For me it was the absolute lack of depth to everything. You're awoken 70 years into the future from cryostasis but this doesn't seem to be remotely interesting to your character, it's barely ever mentioned and no one else seems to care either, you just seem to understand how everything works and who everyone is without any reason. In the character creator it made me pick my profession prior to the events of the game, which had no bearing on the rest of the game at all and didn't explain why I was suddenly very comfortable murdering people and things for no apparent reason except that the game marks them as enemies. The planet you start on has this very thin plotline of "lol big super evil corporation that works everyone like slaves and has literally not a single redeeming quality whatsoever vs the good guys" and you're left to resolve it. Obsidians previous writing staff have been incredible at doing this type of thing tactfully before, making seemingly reprehensible factions or characters actually seem viable or not quite as black and white as initially seen, and that's totally absent here. The solution to this big corpo/fellow man drama was by the way, wanton murder, a rampage and annihilation of one of those groups. I kept getting options to ask about "the plague" but no one had mentioned it, there are so few people populating the environments that no one was talking about it at all, and it felt like they added it in to the text but never implemented it in the game. I dismissed all of this as "oh well, it's the first planet, maybe it's a slow burner and when I start hopping planets and assembling a crew it'll get more exciting, varied and interesting". It did not. There are a very small handful of weapons and an even smaller handful of armours, no true unique items of any sort, and the maps are so small and dull that there's just no incentive to explore whatsoever. The best thing to see about each planet is what you see when you step off your ship, there's nothing special or unique to find beyond that, and exploring only emphasises that they really didn't put much effort into the smaller areas, as if they didn't want you to go there. This all combined with being bombarded with the same 4 enemies throughout the whole game. I love Obsidian and absolutely hate Bethesda, firmly in the camp of "Bethesda ruined Fallout and are as bad as EA", have over 700 hours in New Vegas alone and have really liked all Black Isle and Obsidian games I've played *that share a writing team*. Marketing TOW as "New Vegas in space" is grossly misleading as there isn't a single member of the writing team who did New Vegas present in TOW. This is most evident any time you're presented with a choice, and the dialogue/writing in general, which is leagues inferior to any other game they've done, and even the last two Fallout's. It's quite bizarre for Fallout 3 to have created more unique, populated, diverse and interesting environments in Rivet City alone, than TOW could muster across a slew of planets.
It mostly felt like Borderlands-lite with "hey, you guys liked Firefly, right?". Twelve hours later I've been everywhere I can go and it seen everything I can see a hundred times over. Every conflict is resolved with violence, every quest is "go kill stuff and collect this", same enemies on every planet, my crew fails to interest me in any way whatsoever because there's just not much that can be done with them, no memorable characters or memorable... Anything really. I had one quest to do which looked like it might ramp things up into a different gear which might actually be interesting, so I start it. It's the last quest of the game, that's it, it never went anywhere, never did anything. Just recycled the same few things over and over, drilled into you "big corpo = bad" and gave absolutely no incentive to do a second playthrough. Realising I was on the last level I quit the game and uninstalled it without finishing. I wanted to like it, I really did, I apparently stuck with it to its very brief and abrupt end, but it just never did anything at all. It sounds super harsh but I can't justify giving it anything above a 3/10. It runs like shit even though it doesn't look anywhere near good enough to warrant it, and everything about it is so spectacularly forgettable that within a fortnight of release and playing it, I cannot for the life of me remember the name of a single character or planet. I have over 700 hours in New Vegas, it's buggy and fucked up and Bethesda did everything they could for it to not succeed too much, and if you also loved NV or other Black Isle/Obsidian games in that vein, there's only disappointment here, which is maske quite efficiently with the name of the company and by how awfully Bethesda has done this year.

As for Disco Elysium, you can use a Steam controller, and some people have used Xbox controllers and just remapped the buttons. Either way it'll come to consoles next year so will surely get full controller support soon. Oddly, it'll scratch the Obsidian itch much better than the Obsidian game, because it does give you genuine choice and has spectacularly written dialogue, with a similar sense of humour to the great days of yore. It running on integrated graphics and being easy to go in and out of are also nice bonuses.

[MrNovember]

Wow, so I've had pretty much the exact opposite experience as you with Outer Worlds. I rarely have to resort to violence in any missions. The only enemies I really kill are the ones scattered around outside. I also ended up not killing anyone in the first mission, which definitely didn't end in a rampage for me. The plague was definitely implemented in the game. There was literally a sick house and a few side missions related to getting medicine.

[jrfox92]

Wow, so I've had pretty much the exact opposite experience as you with Outer Worlds. I rarely have to resort to violence in any missions. The only enemies I really kill are the ones scattered around outside. I also ended up not killing anyone in the first mission, which definitely didn't end in a rampage for me. The plague was definitely implemented in the game. There was literally a sick house and a few side missions related to getting medicine.

I've read that players can have vastly different experiences in the game and I guess this proves that.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Wow, savage review Olin. That definitely puts me off at least until I hear a bit more/the price goes down. But what you're saying is what I'm always afraid will happen.

Disco Inferno is absolutely on my must play list after looking up a bit more about it. Will probably just wait till 360 controller support is confirmed as trying to make controllers work by remapping buttons can be incredibly frustrating.

[mr. sound boy king]

TOO MANY COOL GAMES!!!

I am definitely going to play both "Outer Worlds" and "Disco Elysium." I also want to play "ATOM RPG."

Any of you folks played "ATOM RPG" and if so, is it rad or shitty?

https://atomrpg.com/

***

Right now, I'm mucking around a play through in "Dragon's Dogma" on Switch Lite, a sleek console indeed. This 2012 classic action RPG feels like it's from 2012 and my mage keeps dying to roving bandits and mages god-dammit. Therefore, I may not complete my play through of this interesting game.