It was good until it sucked

[vinraith]

Technically, neither of them were lonely urban wasteland survival games because you were never in any danger of dying to the elements. Sleep? Unnecessary. Food? Plentiful. Water? Plentiful. Ammunition? Plentiful.

Didn't so much feel like a desert as it did a beach resort where people occasionally took potshots at you.

I played very little FO3 before installing Wanderer's Edition, so when I think of the game I don't think of the vanilla game, you'll have to forgive me for that. Since NV introduced "hardcore mode" I was expecting a more FWE experience out of NV, and got something quite different. Not bad, mind you, just very different than I was expecting.

Incidentally, if you're interested in a survival experience where sleep is vital, clean water is sparse,balancing radiation intake versus starvation requires careful thought, and ammunition is worth its weight in gold, I'd highly recommend Wanderer's Edition for FO3 and, once they've got it tidied up, Project Nevada for New Vegas (same modders).

@Wizardry

I'd pay real money for a new Wasteland game, yes.

[Nalano]

I played very little FO3 before installing Wanderer's Edition, so when I think of the game I don't think of the vanilla game, you'll have to forgive me for that. Since NV introduced "hardcore mode" I was expecting a more FWE experience out of NV, and got something quite different.

Incidentally, if you're interested in a survival experience where sleep is vital, clean water is sparse,balancing radiation intake versus starvation requires careful thought, and ammunition is worth its weight in gold, I'd highly recommend Wanderer's Edition for FO3 and, once they've got it tidied up, Project Nevada for New Vegas (same modders).

I'm aware of the fact that Bethesda games are basically unplayable without heavy modifications, as I own Morrowind and Oblivion. But that main plot is still in FO3 and if I go back there I'll get whiplash from the illogic.

[vinraith]

I'm aware of the fact that Bethesda games are basically unplayable without heavy modifications, as I own Morrowind and Oblivion. But that main plot is still in FO3 and if I go back there I'll get whiplash from the illogic.

Just mod it out, it's the worst part of the game anyway.

Edit: Well, aside from the "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" quest, that was actually pretty cool.

[Berzee]

an instanced raid or an instanced BG

The things you said are some of the many reasons I loathe the very concept of instancing in MMOs

[TillEulenspiegel]

The things you said are some of the many reasons I loathe the very concept of instancing in MMOs

I just don't understand the whole modern MMO genre. The unique part is that it's supposed to be massively multiplayer. If you aren't exploiting that fact, what the hell are you doing making an MMO?

A persistent world. Tons of players. There are so many interesting things you could be doing with those ingredients, yet we're largely stuck with increasingly minor variations on the same formula.

Anyway, V:tM Bloodlines is the epitome of this problem. So so good, then it just falls apart. I want to play it again, but it feels weird to just stop at a certain point. I expect the WoD MMO will be crap, but maybe CCP will give out the license to others; they have two lovely settings with masses of content to build with.

[Heliocentric]

Minecraft, the first time you lose your house/fall in lava and lose all your equipment/your spawn is suppressed by a constant flow of lava. You want to punch a wall and rage quit.

That happens maybe 5 times before you learn how to make a security vault you can easily access, a path you can follow from your spawn to your house(or now a bed) and learn to keep lava well away from your spawn point.

But, then you hit the second step of minecraft the, the depression, without the constant oppressive fear of failure the game becomes bland, here the artists turn to art, the programmers make computers and the griefers go on-line, the rest move on.

[Nalano]

A persistent world. Tons of players. There are so many interesting things you could be doing with those ingredients, yet we're largely stuck with increasingly minor variations on the same formula.

I know I keep coming back to the topic, but some of my best PC gaming memories involve what MMOs are capable of. (Warning, TLDR)

I quit WoW somewhere near the tail end of BC and came back a year later after Hordies from my server remembered me from PvP, found me in real life, got me drunk and convinced me to join the dark side. I returned the day that faction transfers came about, and joined them in what had become a regular event, one that was totally pointless in terms of game mechanics but meant a great deal for the community: PvP Saturdays.

You see, my server was 3:1 A:H, so the Horde had always banded together for PvP in a far more organized manner than the Alliance by necessity. What ended up happening was that certain representatives (about eighty) of the Horde had turned themselves into a monster noob-eating machine that was frankly ridiculous, where every Saturday we'd take over SW and IF for a few hours. Hours. And then do BGs when bored with that and then purposefully lose Wintergrasp so we could sit there for the next few hours and kill any Alliance who dared try to run a raid on VoA.

So, the Alliance got fed up one day and some guy from a middling raiding guild called us out on the realm forum and declared he'd set up the largest raid on Org we'd ever seen. Well, he was a nobody so we gave him a little hand, calling up the top raiding guilds and setting up the date and time of this epic siege, which was of course to be held on a Saturday in the early afternoon. So, that Saturday at noon we decided on a pre-emptive strike on SW just to prove we were ready for 'em and took 150 or so Hordies on the boat from Northrend. We never made it. The server crashed trying to port us all between the continents. Emboldened by this somewhat inauspicious surprise attack, the Alliance trash talking rose to a fevered pitch on the realm forums, which were already notorious for drama and trolling.

Come the event itself, we ended up having about seven full Horde raids with some stragglers, and the Alliance had cobbled together five full raids plus some stragglers. We had to daisy-chain Vent servers to talk with one another. The event lasted about ten seconds before we brought down the battlegroup. Not the realm: The realm cluster. A handful of realms. For close to an hour. When it came back up again we spent the next three hours mopping up the Alliance as they logged in - special camps even set up shop near all the nearby graveyards in case anybody was stupid enough to spirit rez.

It's at that point that I realized we'd basically beaten the game. Nothing in the game could top that, WoW was won, I could quit in peace.

Point is, stuff like that was made possible by the MMO structure, but clearly wasn't rewarded or even supported by the game itself, which to me is a great lost opportunity.

[vinraith]

But, then you hit the second step of minecraft the, the depression, without the constant oppressive fear of failure the game becomes bland, here the artists turn to art, the programmers make computers and the griefers go on-line, the rest move on.

Yup, once the survival pressure's gone there's really no point.

[Miker]

Limbo.

The last third (in the factory)is pure puzzling, and very little in the way of atmosphere and creepy happenings that made the previous two-thirds of the game so interesting. The puzzles in the last third also required considerably more platforming skill than the earlier puzzles. The entire game is trial and error, yes, but in the last third it ticked me off because it was just puzzle after puzzle.

[Sheps]

Everything after Kane dies in Fahrenheit. And I have to agree about Assassins Creed games, they would be fantastic, if not for the bland empty "real world".

I loved Indigo Prophecy but I did notice at the time that the story went from perfectly timed and well paced to just completely over the top towards the last hour or so of the game.

Still an instant classic for me but the game really went off the deep end towards the finale.

[Anthile]

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Once you enter the crypt, about halfway through the game, you have seen everything the game has to offer. There is a serious lack of variety in the second half.

[Casimir Effect]

because he becomes Pope sort of makes sense, except we're talking about a game where I'm messing with time like a Christmas toy by jumping all over it.

I would have even accepted my killing him..only to find he's not the real Rodrigo Borgia! Dun dun dun.

Pull that old trick and you're on a slippery slide though. Once you do the whole "Actually it was my identical twin! Dun dun dun" thing then a lot of your characters lose credibility because this trick can apply to any of them. Perceivably you could then have Ezio's dad stride out from the Vatican saying " You didn't think they could kill me did you?" while his younger brother rides by on a Vespa going "Ciao".
I am actually with you though. Not being able to kill Borgia when you totally had him was very annoying and broke characters all over the place.

I feel this way about any strategy game (Total War series, GalCiv, etc.) where you go from struggling to fight and stay alive (exciting, interesting) to suddenly mopping up the rest of the civilizations(tedious, boring). To date, I can't think of a single game where you have to fight for survival all the way to the point of victory.

There's no real way a strategy game can't have this point unless it's retardedly hard like the final level of Emperor: Battle For Dune. All the Total War games will have a point where you now dominate the map so all that's left is to mop-up (similarly in Civ games). Smaller-scale RTS like C&C, SupCom or Starcraft also have a tipping point where you're defended sufficiently that you can just sit back and build up massive forces. the only way to combat this is with a troop limit (Company of Heroes did this perfectly) or lots of time-limit missions to stop turtling (that final Emperor level again springs to mind). All a Total War game can do is pull the Huns or Mongols out of its ass and throw them at you. But they can be beaten with some forsight and planning.

King Arthur actually did quite a good job of keeping up the difficulty all the way through but it did it via cheating bastard methods: such as spawning new armies for the enemy which contained fully-levelled, high-tier troops and making it so the enemy didn't have to worry about paying for this super-army's upkeep. Damn good game though.

[vinraith]

I feel this way about any strategy game (Total War series, GalCiv, etc.) where you go from struggling to fight and stay alive (exciting, interesting) to suddenly mopping up the rest of the civilizations(tedious, boring). To date, I can't think of a single game where you have to fight for survival all the way to the point of victory.

AI War resolves this rather neatly through the AI Progress mechanic. In short, the enemy takes you more seriously the better you're doing, and brings more forces to bear against you as a result. The key is to win by arousing as little attention as possible. The more of the map you control, the more likely you are to get clobbered.

[Serenegoose]

AI War resolves this rather neatly through the AI Progress mechanic. In short, the enemy takes you more seriously the better you're doing, and brings more forces to bear against you as a result. The key is to win by arousing as little attention as possible. The more of the map you control, the more likely you are to get clobbered.

This is a system that could work in many RTS games - not all, and it isn't a universal system - but you could easily say apply it to a classical era game as you raise say a celtic rebellion against the might of Rome - but not in such a way that the legions are called down upon you all at once. Fascinating concept.

[vinraith]

This is a system that could work in many RTS games - not all, and it isn't a universal system - but you could easily say apply it to a classical era game as you raise say a celtic rebellion against the might of Rome - but not in such a way that the legions are called down upon you all at once. Fascinating concept.

Yup, asymmetric strategy is a marvelous thing, and needs to be more common.

[Berzee]

But, then you hit the second step of minecraft the, the depression, without the constant oppressive fear of failure the game becomes bland, here the artists turn to art, the programmers make computers and the griefers go on-line, the rest move on.

And my wife installs a billion mods and becomes a sort of scarily determined horse breeder (and now with the aether, bird breeder) and explorer of worlds. =P While I fall into "the rest", but hopefully not forever.

[outoffeelinsobad]

System Shock 2, after you leave the Rickenbacker. I was really pissed when I found out Delacroix was dead, and that ruined the rest of the game for me.

[Althea]

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Once you enter the crypt, about halfway through the game, you have seen everything the game has to offer. There is a serious lack of variety in the second half.

Plus, compared to the rest of the game, the crypt was a bitch.

[airtekh]

System Shock 2, after you leave the Rickenbacker. I was really pissed when I found out Delacroix was dead, and that ruined the rest of the game for me.

After you leave the Von Braun, surely?

The Rickenbacker is where SS2 goes into linear mode, until the end of the game. The Body of the Many is still a bit of a mindfuck though.

[Berlin]

Limbo.

It was good until it resembled some kind of a creepy rendition of "Lord of the Flies" but in Limbo, then it turned all hotels and saws with unforgiving puzzles of trial-and-error-and-death-you-stupid-not-brilliant-as-us-designers-fuck, then it ended with one of the worst endings I've ever seen.