Was there a way to gain countdown timer time? I rendered my only playthrough unbeatable due to using the dragon transformation too often.Loki_The_Good said:
(D)evolution of Game Series/Franchises
- Thread starter 4RM3D
- Start date
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There's going to be repetitions in there, but I don't care. It's my take on things.
The Requisite TL
R because Holy Fuck Ermahgerd Wall of Text
Elder Scrolls : steady improvements; Oblivion was awesome for how granular it was, but I love how focused Skyrim feels. To each his own, basically.
Fable : great concept, huge potential ? meh execution. Standard Molyneux fare.
PROTOTYPE : should be renamed by the bigwigs at Activision. The series really needs to be called Popped Collars with Blades Everywhere Inflict their Angst in Weaponized Form upon Innocent Manhattan Residents ? and it's all so Terribly Boring.
With that said, allons-y, Alonzo!
The Requisite TL
R because Holy Fuck Ermahgerd Wall of TextElder Scrolls : steady improvements; Oblivion was awesome for how granular it was, but I love how focused Skyrim feels. To each his own, basically.
Fable : great concept, huge potential ? meh execution. Standard Molyneux fare.
PROTOTYPE : should be renamed by the bigwigs at Activision. The series really needs to be called Popped Collars with Blades Everywhere Inflict their Angst in Weaponized Form upon Innocent Manhattan Residents ? and it's all so Terribly Boring.
With that said, allons-y, Alonzo!
The Elder Scrolls
That's a rather divisive one. Arena was more of a dungeon-crawler than an open-world, while Daggerfall is a precursor of open-world games. Unfortunately, design constraints common to the era made it rather user-unfriendly. Some people loved being forced to glean info left and right to figure out where anything was located, others raged at being able to feel directed.
Redguard was... something else. Not terribly Elder Scrolls-ish other than for the fact that it's set in Hammerfell and includes a few stand-outs from the lore. I think it's the one and only game where you actually get to see a Sload, for instance. I remember there was an N-Gage release that was surprisingly well-received but ? really, now. The Nokia N-Gage. I might as well call it the LOLGage.
Then comes Morrowind. We're back to Daggerfall's basic model, but in full 3D! There's a compass but no markers, the interface is a tad unintuitive (and I'm being generous), which makes exploration and basic survival a pretty daunting task for newcomers. Past that, though, you're left with incredibly deep lore, awesome world-building, and the first game since Daggerfall that makes you feel like the fate of Tamriel is in your hands.
Mechanically, I'd say Oblivion was quite sound. Not perfect ? mods made it perfect ? but entirely playable in its vanilla format. The insane promises regarding Gamebryo's AI turned out to be baloney, the FaceGen character generation system produced some truly disturbing results if you didn't mod the ever-loving shit out of the Character Creation system. There's a ton of granular systems for the core types to poke around, and enough of a sense of direction for more casual roleplayers to just plow through the main quest. A bit of everything for everyone, then ? including some of the least convincing voice work ever.
It had its flaws, but it still was a ridiculously awesome time leech. Plus ? anything that adds to the Sean Bean Death Reel counts as a win in my book.
Patrick Stewart was totally wasted, though, much like Liam Neeson's Dad, from Fallout 3.
Finally ? Skyrim. Beth went ahead and took out a lot of those optional systems I mentioned; but in doing so they streamlined the character generation process. Yes, Oblivion had insanely deep options for customization and general levelling up, but the idea that only certain ?core? skill contributed to your build made it difficult to feel a sense of progression and/or reward when you were tackling a faction quest that didn't exactly fit your dominating play style. In Skyrim, that's fixed. Everything contributes equally, so you're free to dabble or to use the outliers in your pack if you're a broadsword user but are stuck using bows for some reason or another.
Personally, I found that it makes the uniques a lot more useful. It's not because I'm rolling an Archery-based dude that the Mace of Molag Bal will be of no use to me, for instance. They also fixed the scaling for bandits, seeing as I never could understand how a bunch of cutthroats squatting on the Niben Bay's beachside could manage to score full sets of Daedric armor... It's nice to be able to actually feel powerful for a change, especially after a Blood Dragon comes within an inch of kicking your ass to Sovngarde.
I'm generally terrible at finding flaws to Skyrim. At best, I'd say I miss the way I'd have to fiddle with my bow's inclination before placing a shot. Archery being an FPS-like WYSIWYG system removed part of the brain-teasing aspects of the combat.
But ? honestly, Bethesda. You're sticking dragons in my game and I still can't ride and control them, three DLC packs later?! I'm turning to the mods for that but I am very disappoint. Very.
Fable
Ah, the eternally middling series, lamed by the insane ambitions of its own creator... We were taught to expect so much from you, Fable, and you didn't deliver anything bad per se, but what we did get was ? okay. Not terrible, not genre-redefining, just plain and simply okay.
Fable : The Lost Chapters showed promise. The plot was standard, but having Black & White-ish control over the destiny of a single hero made those god-gaming elements the series is known for feel a tad more personal. The central mechanics were tantalizing enough for one playthrough, but technical constraints and design oversights pushed you into either sainthood or demonic lordship. Either way, the end result was typically an OTP ************ in terribly blocky armor, sporting white hair and a metric fuckton of scars. The journey felt impersonal as a result ? like I was ticking boxes down to some sort of Prerequisite State of Utter Badassery that was being delivered without an ounce of gusto.
Fable II didn't do much more than introduce land ownership, the fairer sex, terrible odd jobs and gunplay. The gameplay felt a bit more reactive ? especially in the combat segments ? and I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a tiny bit of a thrill during some of the late-game encounters I ran into. Mixing and matching magic, muskets and claymores allowed you to truly feel like an absolutely badass ************.
It's just too bad the road to that point is made up of some of the most tedious stuff I've ever had the displeasure of enduring. I'm just glad the Date and Time exploit was there; otherwise I never would've tolerated the notion of letting my playthrough gather dust for ages in order to rack up interest.
Fable III feels largely like a copy-paste of the second game, albeit with better graphics, John Cleese and Simon Pegg ? plus microtransactions. I would have loved it if only the combat offered the tiniest bit of challenge and if slogging your way through the Kingdom Tycoon aspects of the game wasn't so mind-numbing. Dude, Lionhead ? what'd you do with my kickass XBOX dashboard exploit?! Now I'm gonna have to sit through the game for ages, so I'll have to beg online for some rich pubber from XBL to freaking marry my ass. The fuck?!
(yes, I'm oversimplifying. Yes, I know you can enter a business proposal with a pubber without marriage entering the picture. No, I don't care)
I tried restarting the game recently, only to give up as soon as I realized I'd have to go through those awful, horrible, tedious jobs again, and slowly and painfully buy each and every freaking lot and house in the freaking game.
Then I tried Modio to give myself a fuckton of cash and just blaze my way through the Tycoon portion ? but my USB key won't format. I'm not wasting bandwidth and money on the PC version or on a trainer, either.
Plus, doing that would mean I'd have to potentially buy all the DLC for the PC platform. When I already bought a few pieces on my console.
God fucking damnit, Molyneux.
There's bits and pieces to love there, too. Stephen Fry plays the always entertainingly one-dimensional asstwat that is Reaver; the art direction is top-notch, there's Ben Kingley with an Irish accent because why not ? but none of that cancels out the fact that Fable III is a game that's forgotten what games are supposed to be. That is to say, entertaining. It's a collection of odd jobs and bits and bobs you need to tweak every so often in order to maximize your gold generation. It's Animal Crossing without the Nintendo crack and it's brimming with wit and soul ? but it absolutely squanders it all.
It's sad, really. Seeing the Fable franchise devolve into another multi-support cash cow for Microsoft makes you feel like Lionhead is starting to go Rare's way. The Journey is as mindless as its gameplay, and Fable Heroes was plainly and simply unnecessary.
PROTOTYPE
This thing's really gone downhill fast, hasn't it? Not that it really need to go that deep to reach rock bottom.
The 2009 offering felt like Radical had cribbed directly from their own licensed Hulk game, simply swapping textures and models and replacing glowy green super-strength with Fleshy Tendrils of Emo Death. It's The Incredible Hulk : Ultimate Destruction for people who feel that Bruce Banner can't quite capture the level of Gen-X nihilistic rage we've been taught to consider as being badass. Alex Mercer goes from your token amnesiac with a chip on his shoulder to a gameplay-mandated death machine within a few short hours. For a supposedly focused revenge tale, it's awfully geared towards letting you rack up insane kill tallies. Probably because it makes Mercer feel more like an absolute baller, right?
Ugh. The bottom line is I don't give a shit about Mercer's motivations because they're painted out in strokes that are so broad and undefined and just lost in the absolute mess of the Web of Intrigue thingy. The only saving grace is the gameplay ? and even that gets stale after a bit.
Yay, I'm mostly impervious to bullets. Yay, here's another Hive for me to blast down and another military outpost for me to fuck with, because I need more artillery strikes for some reason. Yay, more Hunters. Yay, more spastic boss fights because being a hyperkinetic virus on legs means you absolutely have to swing yourself around like a psychotic take on Spider-Man just to kill one dude. Oh yay, I can totally blow up the entire sector with another application of my Deathy Tendrils of... Death. Yeah.
It gets samey very, very quickly. No amount of super-intense teeth-gnashing by Barry Pepper can save this.
2012 brings us more of the same, only it's a now carried and dealt in generous helpings by a Black guy with a tragic past and a serious case of Hollywood Tourettes (in that he swears like a sailor).
Hey, look. It's another tough-as-nails wannabe baller with a popped jacket, an attitude thicker than the polar ice caps, and fuckin' blades everywhere, because FUCKIN' BLADES, MAN. SO FUCKIN' HARDCORE, I'MMA BRO-FIST MY OWN FUCKIN' REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR, BRO. AWWW, DJEEEAAAH.
Yeah, no. InFAMOUS still racks all the prizes, in my book. I'll give points to Radical for at least coming up with something that makes mindless bloodshed entertaining for five minutes or so ? but I'm a story and character-driven gamer, personally. Neither Mercer or Heller delivered in that respect.
That's a rather divisive one. Arena was more of a dungeon-crawler than an open-world, while Daggerfall is a precursor of open-world games. Unfortunately, design constraints common to the era made it rather user-unfriendly. Some people loved being forced to glean info left and right to figure out where anything was located, others raged at being able to feel directed.
Redguard was... something else. Not terribly Elder Scrolls-ish other than for the fact that it's set in Hammerfell and includes a few stand-outs from the lore. I think it's the one and only game where you actually get to see a Sload, for instance. I remember there was an N-Gage release that was surprisingly well-received but ? really, now. The Nokia N-Gage. I might as well call it the LOLGage.
Then comes Morrowind. We're back to Daggerfall's basic model, but in full 3D! There's a compass but no markers, the interface is a tad unintuitive (and I'm being generous), which makes exploration and basic survival a pretty daunting task for newcomers. Past that, though, you're left with incredibly deep lore, awesome world-building, and the first game since Daggerfall that makes you feel like the fate of Tamriel is in your hands.
Mechanically, I'd say Oblivion was quite sound. Not perfect ? mods made it perfect ? but entirely playable in its vanilla format. The insane promises regarding Gamebryo's AI turned out to be baloney, the FaceGen character generation system produced some truly disturbing results if you didn't mod the ever-loving shit out of the Character Creation system. There's a ton of granular systems for the core types to poke around, and enough of a sense of direction for more casual roleplayers to just plow through the main quest. A bit of everything for everyone, then ? including some of the least convincing voice work ever.
It had its flaws, but it still was a ridiculously awesome time leech. Plus ? anything that adds to the Sean Bean Death Reel counts as a win in my book.
Patrick Stewart was totally wasted, though, much like Liam Neeson's Dad, from Fallout 3.
Finally ? Skyrim. Beth went ahead and took out a lot of those optional systems I mentioned; but in doing so they streamlined the character generation process. Yes, Oblivion had insanely deep options for customization and general levelling up, but the idea that only certain ?core? skill contributed to your build made it difficult to feel a sense of progression and/or reward when you were tackling a faction quest that didn't exactly fit your dominating play style. In Skyrim, that's fixed. Everything contributes equally, so you're free to dabble or to use the outliers in your pack if you're a broadsword user but are stuck using bows for some reason or another.
Personally, I found that it makes the uniques a lot more useful. It's not because I'm rolling an Archery-based dude that the Mace of Molag Bal will be of no use to me, for instance. They also fixed the scaling for bandits, seeing as I never could understand how a bunch of cutthroats squatting on the Niben Bay's beachside could manage to score full sets of Daedric armor... It's nice to be able to actually feel powerful for a change, especially after a Blood Dragon comes within an inch of kicking your ass to Sovngarde.
I'm generally terrible at finding flaws to Skyrim. At best, I'd say I miss the way I'd have to fiddle with my bow's inclination before placing a shot. Archery being an FPS-like WYSIWYG system removed part of the brain-teasing aspects of the combat.
But ? honestly, Bethesda. You're sticking dragons in my game and I still can't ride and control them, three DLC packs later?! I'm turning to the mods for that but I am very disappoint. Very.
Fable
Ah, the eternally middling series, lamed by the insane ambitions of its own creator... We were taught to expect so much from you, Fable, and you didn't deliver anything bad per se, but what we did get was ? okay. Not terrible, not genre-redefining, just plain and simply okay.
Fable : The Lost Chapters showed promise. The plot was standard, but having Black & White-ish control over the destiny of a single hero made those god-gaming elements the series is known for feel a tad more personal. The central mechanics were tantalizing enough for one playthrough, but technical constraints and design oversights pushed you into either sainthood or demonic lordship. Either way, the end result was typically an OTP ************ in terribly blocky armor, sporting white hair and a metric fuckton of scars. The journey felt impersonal as a result ? like I was ticking boxes down to some sort of Prerequisite State of Utter Badassery that was being delivered without an ounce of gusto.
Fable II didn't do much more than introduce land ownership, the fairer sex, terrible odd jobs and gunplay. The gameplay felt a bit more reactive ? especially in the combat segments ? and I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a tiny bit of a thrill during some of the late-game encounters I ran into. Mixing and matching magic, muskets and claymores allowed you to truly feel like an absolutely badass ************.
It's just too bad the road to that point is made up of some of the most tedious stuff I've ever had the displeasure of enduring. I'm just glad the Date and Time exploit was there; otherwise I never would've tolerated the notion of letting my playthrough gather dust for ages in order to rack up interest.
Fable III feels largely like a copy-paste of the second game, albeit with better graphics, John Cleese and Simon Pegg ? plus microtransactions. I would have loved it if only the combat offered the tiniest bit of challenge and if slogging your way through the Kingdom Tycoon aspects of the game wasn't so mind-numbing. Dude, Lionhead ? what'd you do with my kickass XBOX dashboard exploit?! Now I'm gonna have to sit through the game for ages, so I'll have to beg online for some rich pubber from XBL to freaking marry my ass. The fuck?!
(yes, I'm oversimplifying. Yes, I know you can enter a business proposal with a pubber without marriage entering the picture. No, I don't care)
I tried restarting the game recently, only to give up as soon as I realized I'd have to go through those awful, horrible, tedious jobs again, and slowly and painfully buy each and every freaking lot and house in the freaking game.
Then I tried Modio to give myself a fuckton of cash and just blaze my way through the Tycoon portion ? but my USB key won't format. I'm not wasting bandwidth and money on the PC version or on a trainer, either.
Plus, doing that would mean I'd have to potentially buy all the DLC for the PC platform. When I already bought a few pieces on my console.
God fucking damnit, Molyneux.
There's bits and pieces to love there, too. Stephen Fry plays the always entertainingly one-dimensional asstwat that is Reaver; the art direction is top-notch, there's Ben Kingley with an Irish accent because why not ? but none of that cancels out the fact that Fable III is a game that's forgotten what games are supposed to be. That is to say, entertaining. It's a collection of odd jobs and bits and bobs you need to tweak every so often in order to maximize your gold generation. It's Animal Crossing without the Nintendo crack and it's brimming with wit and soul ? but it absolutely squanders it all.
It's sad, really. Seeing the Fable franchise devolve into another multi-support cash cow for Microsoft makes you feel like Lionhead is starting to go Rare's way. The Journey is as mindless as its gameplay, and Fable Heroes was plainly and simply unnecessary.
PROTOTYPE
This thing's really gone downhill fast, hasn't it? Not that it really need to go that deep to reach rock bottom.
The 2009 offering felt like Radical had cribbed directly from their own licensed Hulk game, simply swapping textures and models and replacing glowy green super-strength with Fleshy Tendrils of Emo Death. It's The Incredible Hulk : Ultimate Destruction for people who feel that Bruce Banner can't quite capture the level of Gen-X nihilistic rage we've been taught to consider as being badass. Alex Mercer goes from your token amnesiac with a chip on his shoulder to a gameplay-mandated death machine within a few short hours. For a supposedly focused revenge tale, it's awfully geared towards letting you rack up insane kill tallies. Probably because it makes Mercer feel more like an absolute baller, right?
Ugh. The bottom line is I don't give a shit about Mercer's motivations because they're painted out in strokes that are so broad and undefined and just lost in the absolute mess of the Web of Intrigue thingy. The only saving grace is the gameplay ? and even that gets stale after a bit.
Yay, I'm mostly impervious to bullets. Yay, here's another Hive for me to blast down and another military outpost for me to fuck with, because I need more artillery strikes for some reason. Yay, more Hunters. Yay, more spastic boss fights because being a hyperkinetic virus on legs means you absolutely have to swing yourself around like a psychotic take on Spider-Man just to kill one dude. Oh yay, I can totally blow up the entire sector with another application of my Deathy Tendrils of... Death. Yeah.
It gets samey very, very quickly. No amount of super-intense teeth-gnashing by Barry Pepper can save this.
2012 brings us more of the same, only it's a now carried and dealt in generous helpings by a Black guy with a tragic past and a serious case of Hollywood Tourettes (in that he swears like a sailor).
Hey, look. It's another tough-as-nails wannabe baller with a popped jacket, an attitude thicker than the polar ice caps, and fuckin' blades everywhere, because FUCKIN' BLADES, MAN. SO FUCKIN' HARDCORE, I'MMA BRO-FIST MY OWN FUCKIN' REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR, BRO. AWWW, DJEEEAAAH.
Yeah, no. InFAMOUS still racks all the prizes, in my book. I'll give points to Radical for at least coming up with something that makes mindless bloodshed entertaining for five minutes or so ? but I'm a story and character-driven gamer, personally. Neither Mercer or Heller delivered in that respect.
They made it more like Company of Heroes, which wasn't a bad thing necessarily.IllumInaTIma said:
The campaigns were a nice change even if they did spawn the 'Bloody Magpies' sub-meme.
Pretty much the poster children of game devolution right there.Ihateregistering1 said:
Can the latest Hitman game even be called a Hitman game? There seems to only be so many missions where you actually have a hit out on anybody. For the most part, it's sneak in or on the run man. Not that story was a high point of the previous games, but Absolution's story seemed actively dumb almost every step of the way.
I actually liked the skill system in Diablo 3. It does some things very well, whereas most games fail.Ihateregistering1 said:
1) While leveling you could explore all skills and find the best combo's.
2) The skills were balanced. The balancing did require a few patches to remove the kinks. In the end game there were multiple viable builds.
3) The game stimulates you to use (and rotate) multiple skills. This is the exact opposite from Torchlight 1, where you just spam 1 skill button through the whole game.
In Diablo 2 it was interesting you had the freedom to choose what you want, including intellect barbarians or other combinations that would totally fuck up your character. In Diablo 3 that choice is gone. Which is the only downside to an otherwise good skill system.
In Torchlight 1 the skill system and leveling system were a complete mess. Most skills were crap and 1 or 2 were very OP. The whole point distribution system didn't work. And then you have that 1 button spam thing, like I mentioned before.
I can't comment on Torchlight 2. I tried to play it, but the game kept crashing. From what little I did play, TL2 didn't feel much different from TL1. But I can't say for sure until I am further into the game.
Maybe Morrowind had more interesting cities. But everything between those cities felt empty and every cave was the same.SpunkeyMonkey said:
It has been a while since I have played the other Tomb Raider games, so my memory is a little foggy in that regard. There wasn't anything outstanding about the Tomb Raider games that I still remember except from the exotic locations.The Madman said:
There have been many Tomb Raider games, but most are forgettable and some even bad (Angel of Darkness). I think Anniversary is still the best of the series (ignoring the recent reboot).
The reboot is a completely different game. To quote @-Dragmire-:
I suppose that's an accurate description. It's a good game, just not anything like Tomb Raider. When I starting playing the new Tomb Raider I was expecting a good game and it deliver on that. I suppose our expectations were just different.-Dragmire- said:
I would say Final Fantasy reached its Narrative peak with 6 but in terms of presentation, 13 was the peak. 13 was a horrible, boring and, tedious game but it was absolutely gorgeous. I would also like to say that Final Fantasy IX was like Resident Evil 4 or Sonic Colors in the story department in that it had absolutely great characters and character moments.4RM3D said:
When it comes to Mario games, they have tried mixing some things up...but not enough things up. New Super Mario U and, Super Luigi U were absolute safe bets. I would liken 3D World to the same level of a risk that Wind Waker was to in that it's different to what the 3D Mario games usually are but not different enough. Then you have oddball games like Fortune Street...which are just odd. If anything I would say the Mario Sports games are kinda samy: play one Mario Golf and you've played them all BUT they are still fun games.
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I played enough of the first 3 Saint's Row and have seen enough of the fourth to make this leap: The first Saint's Row was a GTA-Clone. The second was a GTA-Parody similar to something like Airplane or The Naked Gun. The third was a fart-fueled GTA-Parody in a style similar to the Movie-Movies (Epic Movie etc). The fourth seems to be more the same as the third only with caffeine pills in place of their ADD medication. I haven't played anything of the fourth yet but I'm still going to call Saint's Row a series that embraces style over substance; from the first to the second game a WHOLE LOT was added in. You had the fetish shop if you were patient enough to find it but more than anything it was more of an anti-hero or, super-villain simulator in a world where The Punisher no longer gives a fuck. The third tossed out the subtlety and while it was still fun, it lacked a lot of what made the second one great (like a number of excellent mini-games) and it looks a lot like the 4th is going to continue this trend. I plan on grabbing the fourth eventually but personally, I'm just not as excited for it as I am for other games like Watch Dogs...
Agree with Splinter Cell, disagree with Hitman.Guy from the 80 said:
I think that Absolution still managed to be difficult enough (playing on higher difficulties anyway), and it was frankly more polished that it's predecessors. I liked the fact that you could get silent assassin ratings in multiple ways without having to work out by trial and error the handful of paths the devs programmed in.
Yes, the whole slo-mo thing was a bit daft, but it allowed decent noisy runthroughs that previously felt clunky. And if you were doing a silent one, you simply didn't need to use it (and the game still rewards you for being quiet).
The newer splinter cells are just crap though - it's basically a straight shooter now without any encouragement to be quiet or avoid a bodycount.
Chaos Theory was probably the best one because it was the most open - it was more straightforward to go in with grenades, a sniper, and shotgun, but don't expect Lambert to be happy about it, and don't expect the guards to sit there doing nothing.
I'll always say great things about Daggerfall, one of the formative games of my teen gamer years. I had been very impressed by SSI's DnD Ravenloft game and the other game with that engine Menzoberranzan. And then I played Daggerfall which blew those two out of the water. The problem with comparing it with Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim is there was so much improvement to the hardware between Daggerfall and Morrowind and comparatively little between Morrowind - Skyrim. Not quite an apples and oranges comparison but it is different enough to be a tough comparison. Like comparing Ultima 7, 8, and 9 to say Ultima 1 or 2.rhizhim said:
Fable
First title was quirky and fun even though yes the promised "plant an acorn and a tree shall grow" never happened. In most it was utterly fun and quirky and a joy to play. Fable II was well more of the same and that isn't bad of course and still a good title. Fable III, do we have to talk about it? Yes there quirks you expected where still there but something felt wrong. As in the balance was gone and worse what where you we're playing to was to say the least a really bad end. In short First had a charm, it was different. Second was more of the same and third just fell apart on the seams.
Diablo
Oh flame retardant underwear how I love you, how I loath you! Lets start! I know some people disagree but Diablo was awesome, again it was just awesome. Diablo II was even more with more to do, bigger areas, it felt so much more. Then it took 10 jaar and Diablo III reared its head, it looked good yes.. it seemed to be good old Diablo. But I already felt something was wrong. Lets say that when it was out I saw the real devil, it had a golden shine to it. So yeah something was wrong. They said it wouldn't change the economy or gameplay, they said it would be there only if you wanted. Well we know better now don't we!
Now people see more a game into selling high level gear :! Sure trading always was a problem before but.. this? This is worse! And of course an Inflation from hell! It just isn't a fun game anymore :! So yeah, Torchlight!
First title was quirky and fun even though yes the promised "plant an acorn and a tree shall grow" never happened. In most it was utterly fun and quirky and a joy to play. Fable II was well more of the same and that isn't bad of course and still a good title. Fable III, do we have to talk about it? Yes there quirks you expected where still there but something felt wrong. As in the balance was gone and worse what where you we're playing to was to say the least a really bad end. In short First had a charm, it was different. Second was more of the same and third just fell apart on the seams.
Diablo
Oh flame retardant underwear how I love you, how I loath you! Lets start! I know some people disagree but Diablo was awesome, again it was just awesome. Diablo II was even more with more to do, bigger areas, it felt so much more. Then it took 10 jaar and Diablo III reared its head, it looked good yes.. it seemed to be good old Diablo. But I already felt something was wrong. Lets say that when it was out I saw the real devil, it had a golden shine to it. So yeah something was wrong. They said it wouldn't change the economy or gameplay, they said it would be there only if you wanted. Well we know better now don't we!
Now people see more a game into selling high level gear :! Sure trading always was a problem before but.. this? This is worse! And of course an Inflation from hell! It just isn't a fun game anymore :! So yeah, Torchlight!
Someone else already summed up the Tiberium Series, but here comes the other one:
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
The first Red Alert built up on the foundation of Tiberian Dawn, but instead of near-future, it went the alternate history route. There were five points that made it its own game despite the mechanics being a carbon-copy of TD:
1) The alternate history plot - Einstein goes back in time and kills Hitler. This creates an alternate timeline where the Soviet Union becomes the only big threat to Europe. WW2 follows (inexplicably, country borders follow real world post-WW2 ones).
2) Occasional schizo-tech unit or building.
3) Tanya Adams, the mercenary. Whose costume in the cutscenes made her a bit fanservice-y, but it was too grainy to tell.
4) Conversations between the faction leaders in cutscenes were occasionally humorous.
5) Fucking Hell March!!
Red Alert 2 was a sister game to Tiberian Sun, and again copied a lot of gameplay changes from its sister series. It handled the RA-points thus:
1) The plot picked up from the first game, no new branches of alternative history develop.
2) More schizo-tech, but most units are still relatively "normal".
3) Tanya is now an Allied spec ops agent. She appears more times in cutscenes and is fond of cleavage shots. Lieutenant Eva, the Allied comms officer, slowly loses her clothing throughout the Allied campaign, and the Soviets get a leather-clad girl as a comms officer too. Fanservice abounds, but it's not really "in your face".
4) More humour in the cutscenes. The game now has a decidedly lighter tone.
5) Hell March gets a remix, not as good as the original.
Red Alert 3 came out a few years back.
1) The plot retreads the splitting timelines from RA1. This time Einstein gets killed, to prevent the first split. Japan joins the fun. Feels rather contrived.
2) Most of the units are schizo now. They're also much more specialized, and consequently less versatile, leading to less tactical flexibility.
3) TITS AND ASS GALORE!! The actresses for Tanya and Eva are replaced by Playboy playmates, Eva gets a criminally short skirt. The Soviets get their own Tanya. All campaigns end with gratuitious scenes with female characters.
4) The tone goes from "light" to "cartoonish". The humour of earlier games goes into Family Guy mode. "Let's have George Takei say 'All your base are belong to us!' The fans will LOVE IT!!!"
5) The new remix of Hell March is the worst version of the three. On the other hand, the game has Soviet March, which brings similar levels of awesomeness.
And that's it, Red Alert. I ommitted the expansion packs.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
The first Red Alert built up on the foundation of Tiberian Dawn, but instead of near-future, it went the alternate history route. There were five points that made it its own game despite the mechanics being a carbon-copy of TD:
1) The alternate history plot - Einstein goes back in time and kills Hitler. This creates an alternate timeline where the Soviet Union becomes the only big threat to Europe. WW2 follows (inexplicably, country borders follow real world post-WW2 ones).
2) Occasional schizo-tech unit or building.
3) Tanya Adams, the mercenary. Whose costume in the cutscenes made her a bit fanservice-y, but it was too grainy to tell.
4) Conversations between the faction leaders in cutscenes were occasionally humorous.
5) Fucking Hell March!!
Red Alert 2 was a sister game to Tiberian Sun, and again copied a lot of gameplay changes from its sister series. It handled the RA-points thus:
1) The plot picked up from the first game, no new branches of alternative history develop.
2) More schizo-tech, but most units are still relatively "normal".
3) Tanya is now an Allied spec ops agent. She appears more times in cutscenes and is fond of cleavage shots. Lieutenant Eva, the Allied comms officer, slowly loses her clothing throughout the Allied campaign, and the Soviets get a leather-clad girl as a comms officer too. Fanservice abounds, but it's not really "in your face".
4) More humour in the cutscenes. The game now has a decidedly lighter tone.
5) Hell March gets a remix, not as good as the original.
Red Alert 3 came out a few years back.
1) The plot retreads the splitting timelines from RA1. This time Einstein gets killed, to prevent the first split. Japan joins the fun. Feels rather contrived.
2) Most of the units are schizo now. They're also much more specialized, and consequently less versatile, leading to less tactical flexibility.
3) TITS AND ASS GALORE!! The actresses for Tanya and Eva are replaced by Playboy playmates, Eva gets a criminally short skirt. The Soviets get their own Tanya. All campaigns end with gratuitious scenes with female characters.
4) The tone goes from "light" to "cartoonish". The humour of earlier games goes into Family Guy mode. "Let's have George Takei say 'All your base are belong to us!' The fans will LOVE IT!!!"
5) The new remix of Hell March is the worst version of the three. On the other hand, the game has Soviet March, which brings similar levels of awesomeness.
And that's it, Red Alert. I ommitted the expansion packs.
It's the other way around.scorptatious said:
Learning through use was way, way, way, WAY more grindy than using Mana. Early game, it's roughly equivalent, but late game, you can get hundreds of thousands of mana in a single cave of ordeals run. And you don't even have to do it with the character you're levelling. Making a new character in Disgaea 1 and 2, and getting them the weapon skills they need, literally took hours. In 3 and 4, just game the system and you can max them out without ever actually using them. That shit is what Disgaea is all about!
True.Denamic said:
I have placed my magic users in the Robber Shop Club so they can acquire some of the mana other characters were getting. So it was easier for my healer to learn the healing spells she needed than it was in 1 and 2.
Interesting, I played the game as another installment of the Breath of fire series(as in a classic jrpg) as opposed to a roguelike. The perspective I had while playing it made me rather bitter toward the title when I rage quit it. Still, that's a very strange version of permadeath considering it's mostly within the control of the player.Loki_The_Good said: