The followers were quite a nice and helpful addition to AC, but the tower defense, from revelations, was so pointless that I didn't encountered it beyond the mandatory tutorial.Originally Posted by Casimir Effect
I also hate crafting systems in most games and hope the one in AC3 will as non-essential as the bomb crafting system in revelations.
To add to people playing AssCreed, I'm still playing the second one. Just got to play as Desmond again for the first time in a while. The game is ok, but needs a lot less of this gotta-catch-em all business and better combat, because counter just wins everytime. 8 lads, no problem, just counter everything, they'll all line up nicely.
As I said before, everything I'm seeing in this game has been done better in other games. Combat is much better in Batman games and the free running is much more fun in Prototype.
the crafting in ac3 is rather front and center, unfortunately. not sure how much of it is avoidable, but (early on, anyway) it get shoved down your throat to a certain degree.
Played a good few of Shogun 2 last night and I’m very impressed, it’s wide, deep, challenging and polished to a sheen. By far the most complete Total War there has been out of the box by quite some distance, it’s a corker. Few observations so far, all encountered on a normal campaign.It’s already provided more of a fair challenge than any of the many TW games I’ve played since the release of the first Shogun on their respective hardest difficulty,and were it not for a faction specific trait I would have been dead after about 8 turns.
Maintaining a large enough army to fend off a very competent AI broke me financially and necessitated that I disband my best units or justify their existence through conquest, no more just having armies sitting around until they’re needed.
Diplomacy and Subterfuge have been vital to survive, let alone win. My allies have been active as well, acting as though they had their own motives beyond merely existing or stopping/passively assisitng me. Thus I have to think in terms of what makes sense rather than what makes sense to the computer in vanilla TW games(attack, or don’t attack yet?), which is a huge difference. The narrative is more involved, more realistic and more epic as a result.
The Empire building-this is now quite a complex element as of itself. Not just a case of build barracks to produce various soldiers, and also buy lots of economic buildings; there is a real choice now, you have to juggle between troop production, economy and occasionally food supply as well.You can’t just produce all the best things everywhere because there is no best thing anymore, what you need to build depends entirely on your circumstance and someone fighting a reactive war will have to build differently to someone planning conquest to someone planning consolidation. If you don’t plan ahead then your efforts will not match your optimum capacity. Likewise the Arts(research) tree ensures that you need to know what you want to do at least partially in advance. It’s no longer just a case of deciding whether you want to fight, or whether you want to sit and consolidate, you also need to decide how and when you’re going to do that and what leeway you want to leave yourself for quick advance in either approach when things don’t go as planned. This means there isn’t really any down time anymore, and every decision and turn counts, or is wasted if it doesn’t. Whereas before TW games were all about the fights and the desire to give them some basic context, Shogun 2 finally gives them about as much weight as each other. You could probably play just the economic and RPG elements on the campaign map with the battles playing out as they do in CIV and it would still be a very good game.
Battles-AI is tough. Doesn’t do stupid things anymore for a start. If it’s on good ground and you’re the attacker it will sit there indefinitely. If you’re defending and in a good position it will use flanking and hidden manoeuvres to try and negate that. AI army composition is balanced which means you’ll probably lose if yours isn’t, and it is quick to start using strong units quickly. Ten turns in and I’m already encountering masses of next tier infantry and cavalry while I’m struggling with the basic elements. I’ve won the two decisive battles I’ve played but at heavy cost. I’m playing as the Hattori faction who get a special deployment rule as one of their advantages, without it I would have lost both hands down. One of them was a phyrric victory anyway, but achieved at the cost of the Oda family being wiped out while my allies took their capital a few provinces away. It felt like a truly epic scripted moment but had occurred organically and for wholly rational reasons.
That’s where it’s greatness lies-it’s this incredible narrative simulator and every part of the story it tells plays rationally and transparently and massively all at once, it is rich without being complicated, challenging without being obtuse, simple to navigate and experience whilst being hard to win. It’s about the whole of Japan, not just your clan and everyone vs, and it manages to balance the complexity and depth of that whole nationwide scale with the accessibility and personal character and choice required to successfully feel like a fully formed character within that context.
Last edited by sonson; 20-11-2012 at 09:45 AM.
It's a critical thing which is very often overlooked, and having to ask this indicates that the answer is no. I always look out for clues like this in reviews. They are incredibly telling.
Let's pick on DICE for example: how long after release did it take them to make BF2142 consistently and correctly remember your class/kit configurations? More than a year! Yet still years later BF3 updates have deleted my setups repeatedly. They may well ship a game with serious usability flaws and hand off maintenance to an entirely different group. I don't think any developer wants to leave their product in such a state, but publishers want to save time and cut costs.
These stories are awful: Romanian Strike Preventing QA on Bad Company 2 Patch, Battlefield 3 PC patches delayed by console certification process. When quality control is somebody else's problem the priorities are just screwed up.
Developers often don't want to play their own games because they get sick of them and lack sufficient downtime. Sonic Team were known for hating their own franchise because SEGA wouldn't let them work on anything else, and the results of that are firmly established, also earning them a fanbase that hates most of the franchise.
Ubisoft are among my least liked publishers for many reasons, and while their first-party games are usually handled better, they mistreat others like the Silent Hunter titles and FarCry 2. I'm not at all surprised to see AC3 rushed out to release with numerous bugs and sloppy design problems.
I've started to play Hitman: Absolution and despite my initial worries it's been quite an enjoyable experience thus far. The levels themselves are noticeably smaller than they were in Blood Money, but they somewhat make up for it by being crammed full of details. I'm already looking forward to replaying some of the missions and trying out different approaches.
It's definitely the most polished Hitman game so far on a purely technical level. The graphics and animations are fantastic, the UI is quite simple and straightforward and the AI acts fairly logical most of the time. Even the voice acting is decent, though I'm never quite sure whether Bateson is trying to be serious or not.
It remains to be seen whether the later levels can keep the high standards of the early ones. I remain hopeful though.
^ The RPS review mentioned checkpoints, so I assume there is no quicksave?
There aren't. Most missions consist of small segments that are linked together and you get a checkpoint whenever you enter a new one. There's also some checkpoints you can manually activate.
I can see how the lack of individual saves would be annoying for some people, but after playing Blood Money on Professional, where you aren't allowed any saves at all, I'm used to replaying segments so it doesn't bother me all that much.
Anyone else think PlanetSide 2 have medicore gameplay ?
... I take the lives of a few to protect the lives of many. I commit acts of war to preserve the greater peace. I take no joy in killing, but make no mistake; I'll do what needs to be done. Because it's my job. It's my duty. My name is Sam Fisher, and I am a Splinter Cell.
Vanu only has gamepewpewpew.
No, leave.
Noooooo, U!
... I take the lives of a few to protect the lives of many. I commit acts of war to preserve the greater peace. I take no joy in killing, but make no mistake; I'll do what needs to be done. Because it's my job. It's my duty. My name is Sam Fisher, and I am a Splinter Cell.
I haven't played the game, but I imagine it would be mediocre if you ran around all on your own shooting at whichever enemy happens to wander into your sights.
I'm quite enjoying Dishonored, but it really shows that it's a multiplatform game. The game actually looks worse than DX:HR, from what I can tell. I happened to look at a wooden beam that looked like it came right out of Minecraft. I'd take a few screenshots, but Afterburner is refusing to cooperate.
Being able to have only one power OR one weapon usable at a time annoys the crap out of me. And that you can never unequip your sword. And that they never tell you that to holster your weapons you need to hold F. And the dark corners out of sight of the guards that are perfect to hide bodies are just a little bit too frequent to be plausible. I find one almost every three meters.
However, I really like the acrobatics, and that lethal takedowns are quicker than nonlethal ones, and that you can pickpocket people. Also, I possessed someone's dog and ferried myself to a better hiding spot, that was cool.
Just played like seven hours of Assassin's Creed 3, it's fucking amazing. Yeah, if you want a lean, mechanics driven game, you're going to be disappointed, but AC has never been that. If you want a huge, sumptuous, talky, crazy, absurdly beautiful gamesplosion, check it out.
Playing through Alice: Madness Returns. What a disturbing but gorgeous game. I mean, I had heard the visuals were crazy, but the title is absolutely fitting. Fairly vanilla jumping mechanics, but I am enjoying the combat portions. But again, traversing the environments is the biggest draw here. If you haven't checked this game out by now, do so. I'm sure it will probably even come up in the Steam Sale :)
I'm about 20 hours in and crafting is entirely optional. There's a bit of forced crafting at the beginning to show you that the option is there but I've not gone back to it since. It doesn't help that most of the people you need for crafting are locked for long periods. I'm around sequence 10 and I'm only just able to unlock more than a couple of craftsmen. Most recipes are still uncraftable because I lack people of the right type. A bunch of new homestead missions unlocked in sequence 9 so that might finally make the system usable. I can't say I'm rushing to use it because it's far too fiddly and seems to feature a lot of items purely for vanity or money making.
Once I figured out the 'trick' (I can be a bit thick some times) I thoroughly enjoyed the game. Got stuck on the text adventure bit though, 'cause I can never get past text adventures. Managed to do a few things in the different rooms, but still not enough to actually start the ship.
RE: Planetside 2
I clicked on the button, saw it was a 9Gb download and then clicked the cancel button. I seriously doubt I'll play enough to warrant having 9Gbs of constantly-updating game on my hard drive. Which is a shame, 'cause the RPS excitement is contagious.
weekendwarrio.rs - We've got more games than time...
You should try it. It's a very fun game!
I repeat myself, but ... Blitzkrieg is not an easy game.
Spent a good bit of Monday trying to figure out how to do a mission and failed every time. Then I went to bed and lay there mulling it over before I fell asleep. Got up Tuesday and got it perfectly in the first try (just had to have my single available sniper crawl way behind enemy lines, take out the crews of four artillery pieces, one anti-aircraft gun, a mortar, destroy three reinforcement trucks, two armored cars and kill some eighty odd soldiers. Then sneak some trucks in to steal the artillery pieces and then barrage the hell out of everything). Didn't lose a single unit.
Then I spent all the rest of the day trying to solve the next mission. I think it took fifteen tries to get it just halfway right.
It's more like a puzzle game than an RTS in some respects. A puzzle game where you don't know what half the pieces look like (but then, that also goes for parts of Company of Heroes and Men of War and such).
Easy as pie!
Reply With Quote
