2016 Video Games Thread

[Galaril]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Yep, you have to build the spaceship and then it tells you how to do pulse drive. Travel to the next planet was around 30-45 seconds for me.

I like that there are SO many options on what you can do and where you can do it. It's just lots of exploration. However, I think the GTA types who need more focused missions aren't going to like this game at all.

Yeah that would be me. Guess I am glad I held off. I have learned over time though it sounds great I don't have the time to spend in a game for 2-3 hours a day and these huge open world games will have to wait till retirement someday:-)

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Galaril

Yeah that would be me. Guess I am glad I held off. I have learned over time though it sounds great I don't have the time to spend in a game for 2-3 hours a day and these huge open world games will have to wait till retirement someday:-)

I'm overwhelmingly blah about the game from what I'm seeing, but for a different reason.

I (sadly, frankly) do kinda have the time for extended play. I'm just not seeing a ton of point here. Too little story, too much lather/rinse/repeat.

[mckerney]

Jim Fucking Sterling did not really like No Man's Sky.

Just a moment...

No Man’s Sky effectively portrays the loneliness of space by providing so little for the player to do that it’s tempting to flush one’s self out of an airlock just to break the tedium.
Not that you can do that. That would be too interesting.
After all the hype, all the promises, all the boasting of procedurally generated wonder and dynamic encounters, Hello Games’ “ambitious” spacefaring game is little more than just another crafting and survival experience, more about performing mundane, repetitive tasks than providing unique and exciting encounters.
If you’re not sick of the hundreds of survival games out there already then No Man’s Sky, with its endless resource collection and irritating inventory management, might be for you.

No Man’s Sky is indicative of a big problem the games industry has – conflating the size of a game’s world with the quality of its character. It’s yet another game that pushes scale above everything else, but when it comes down to actually playing the thing, sheer landmass doesn’t account for much.
I simply do not care that I can explore a universe when that universe contains animals a mere window dressing, lifeforms that stand affixed to one spot, abridged visual novel confrontations, and an endless need to shoot rocks and trees to continue micromanaging every banal detail of my character.
The endless collection of resources needed to refill multiple fuel sources is a total drag, but it’s really the best bit of substance the game has to offer. An incessant journey from planet to planet, zapping carbon and iron out of plants and stones so you can journey to more planets in order to zap more plants and stones.
This constant feeling of chasing one’s own tail for the sheer sake of it is found in many survival games, and it’s just as prevalent here. Everything is a chore, everything needs some special sort of fuel source, and there’s not enough room to carry it all. You start out slow, unable to sprint for long, with a terrible jetpack for a modicum of enhanced travel.

IGN has similar feelings about it.

No Man's Sky Review in Progress - IGN

As for highlights, the few hand-crafted moments in No Man’s Sky stand out from the bland procedural universe. Landing on an Atlas station or Anomaly for the first time inspired some awe, and some of the more elaborate encounters with monolith sites excited me with sights I hadn’t seen before. In a game where nearly every other building we see is a tiny habitat or at most a trading outpost with landing pads, those massive temple-like structures are the universe’s biggest source of distinctive personality and mystery. They’re also where the biggest chunks of cryptic, riddle-laced dialogue are dispensed – in plain English, for a change – which give you a momentary reminder that there is a goal to strive for and an overarching question about what role you’re supposed to play in whatever Atlas has planned. Even so, the story has failed to ignite any interest in me - the lack of conflict or urgency or coherent problems to solve have made it little more than a curiosity in the background when it pops up from time to time.

So as you can tell, much of the fun has gone out of playing at this point. That said, every game of this type has an addictive, compulsive quality to it that keeps me going, and keeps me stopping my ship whenever I see a giant shining pile of valuable minerals. But by and large, I’ve settled into an unexciting rut, repeating the cycle of mining chores and jumping ahead until I reach the center. So I’ll press onward, and try to hold out hope for improvement before I get to the end and write my final review.

[JonInMiddleGA]

fwiw, Sterling's written remarks come off much stronger than the video I watched last night.

I felt like what's written is his honest take, he seemed (as I think I mentioned here earlier) like he was trying really hard to not be brutally honest

[Atocep]

How RimWorld Generates Great Stories | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

[GoldenCrest Games]

Quick RimWorld story:

Tried to tame an alpaca, because I lost my dog to an angry cobra.

Alpaca wasn't having it, and promptly beat my guy to death.

Alpaca, still angry, got his 3 alpaca buddies to gang up on my outpost, causing several large explosions and mauling the rest of my party.

Lesson Learned: Alpaca is not Your Dog. Get over it

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Some fun Sid Meier memories in this article.

The Best Sid Meier Video Games

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Some fun Sid Meier memories in this article.

The Best Sid Meier Video Games

I can't take it seriously without SimGolf.

[Vince, Pt. II]

SimGolf was so great.

[JPhillips]

One of life's great mysteries is why is there no SimGolf app?

[korme]

Bought RimWorld, played for 2 hours, got a refund. Couldn't figure out what the fuss was about. Not a lot to do and then you die.

[korme]

SimGolf was amazing. Man, good times

[Groundhog]

I fired up a Rimworld game on the safest setting because I was sick of getting attached to my little Rimworldians only to have something horrible wipe them out. Anyway, things were going great, had a triple-freezer setup to happily support my 15 Rimworldians, when my airconditioner blew up, torching all my food in all 3 freezers (....mental note for next time: spread that shit out)... right after finishing my harvests.

Watching all 15 of my Rimworldians either starve to death or go on murderous rampages was heart breaking.

[Groundhog]

Originally Posted by korme

Bought RimWorld, played for 2 hours, got a refund. Couldn't figure out what the fuss was about. Not a lot to do and then you die.

Most of the game is prioritizing tasks for your settlers then queuing up things for them to do. Helps to know what the keys are early one (ie. someone to fight, someone to heal, and someone to grow food) and pick your starting colonists accordingly. It's not going to be for everyone, but it's like a super user-friendly version of Dwarf Fortress.

[thesloppy]

Wow! I've never got anywhere close to 15 colonists, that's gotta be pushing maximum density, yes? In my current colony I've had 7 forever, and I keep turning people away because things seem to be going well enough, and I don't particularly want to support anybody new.

[Groundhog]

15 is a guesstimate, but must have been at least 12. This is using the '5 colonists' start condition, and I recruited probably half of those from prisoners/crash survivors as well, because the drip of new colonists was really slow, especially taking into account a few deaths early on.

[mckerney]

NieR: Automata coming to Steam in addition to PS4!

[NobodyHere]

Looks like Dragon Quest XI is reconfirmed for the NX

Report: Creator Confirms Dragon Quest XI On Nintendo NX

[mckerney]

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is out tomorrow and looks to be on par with Human Revolution.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Review – PRAXIS Makes Perfect – The Jimquisition

Even with a somewhat disappointing final furlong, one can’t help but be satisfied by what Mankind Divided has to offer. A solid story that manages to keep its more ridiculous elements in surprising check, tons of gameplay options with hours of optional material, and the simple satisfaction that comes with being a mechanical metahuman, the latest Deus Ex is possibly the most accomplished in the series, despite not being as complete as it seems it should’ve been.

At its very worst, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is just as good as Human Revolution, which is really not a problem if you think Human Revolution was absolutely bloody marvelous.

I’m sure you can guess what I thought of it by now.

9/10
Superb

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by mckerney

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is out tomorrow and looks to be on par with Human Revolution.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Review – PRAXIS Makes Perfect – The Jimquisition

This was a preordered for me. I loved human revolution and this sounds like they've taken that and made it a bit better. Really looking forward to it.

[LanePops]

Originally Posted by Atocefp

This was a preordered for me. I loved human revolution and this sounds like they've taken that and made the bathmate better a bit better. Really looking forward to it.

MGS the Phantom Pain and Fifa for me.

[SirFozzie]

Any word on if there's going to be a PS4 price drop in the next couple weeks? (I figure the new PS4 Slim will be taking the old price point)

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by SirFozzie

Any word on if there's going to be a PS4 price drop in the next couple weeks? (I figure the new PS4 Slim will be taking the old price point)

Likely the usual $50 drop. Better value is going to be all the bundle deals that show up after the announcement. They'll start doing the 2-4 games with the original PS4. Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and Target are the usual culprits.

[nilodor]

NBA 2K Feature List Dropped
NBA 2K17 Features Improvements Across The Board, Here's 75 of Them - Operation Sports

Some pretty cool stuff in MyLeague/GM

- League expansion allows players to start with 30-36 teams.
- Leagues will dynamically expand in future years.
- Total user control over expansion AND contraction.
- Expansion draft fully implemented. Each team can protect up to 8 players. There is logic put in place where contenders will keep their team's core in-tact, while a younger team is more likely to expose their aging pricey veterans to the expansion draft.
-Perhaps one of the most impressive features - Dynamic rule changes. For instance, league meetings will occur during the offseason. An extreme example would be the league voting on using a sudden death OT rule change first bucket wins. Extreme cases such as this are very rare, we were told. More common would be changes to the shot clock timer, back clock timer, etc.
-Advanced rotations--a whole new gameplan that not only allows you to slot your minutes like before, but actually when your players play those minutes and with whom those minutes are played with. Players will typically play in units. This is very deep, but can also be autoed by asking for coach recommendations.
-Jersey retirements now exist, and logic has been put in place to prevent a player having their jersey retired after a short amount of time on team.

[Eaglesfan27]

Wow. That full list is very impressive. I was planning on skipping NBA 2k17 for this year because I'm so invested in my current 2k16 MyGM league, but I can't pass up all of those innovations.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I can vouch for several of those points being the absolute draw for my 18 y/o

League expansion allows players to start with 30-36 teams.
- Leagues will dynamically expand in future years.
- Total user control over expansion AND contraction.

He's even talking about those during phone calls home for cryin' out loud.

[bhlloy]

All very nice, but I'm ecstatic about advanced rotations. No more lineup with 4 big men or 3 point guards for no good reason because the game alogrithm decided they needed to get minutes at that particular point.

If done right the expansion stuff is freaking amazing as well.

[Groundhog]

I hope they put some time into the draft classes, although I doubt it. Generally speaking if you don't get one of the top 3 or 4 guys in the draft you might as well trade for a future pick and hope for the best, because it's a sea of guards who can't shoot or bigs who can't do anything. I'd like more variety, especially one-dimensional specialists. Some years I manually tune my classes, but it takes a long time and ruins the surprise for myself.

[nilodor]

Holy friggin trout (NBA 2K MyLeague Features)

NBA 2K17 MyLEAGUE, MyLEAGUE Online & MyGM Blog With Erick Boenisch - Operation Sports

[Eaglesfan27]

Awesome blog. So much greatness in it.

[Balldog]

Advanced rotations are a huge add for me. I've done auto sub for as long as I can remember and always been frustrated. Can't wait


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[NobodyHere]

I'm addicted to Dragon Quest 7

The game came out Friday and I already have 30 hours on it.

[SackAttack]

Dragon Quest...7? Is that a remake of the PS2 game, or is there a different one you're confusing the numeration with?

[NobodyHere]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

Dragon Quest...7? Is that a remake of the PS2 game, or is there a different one you're confusing the numeration with?

It's the 3DS remake of the PS1 version

Amazon.com: Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past - Nintendo 3DS: Video Games

[SackAttack]

Oh, hang a bit. I think DQIX was the PS2 game. I think regular DS got a remake of DQ7, too, didn't it?

[NobodyHere]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

Oh, hang a bit. I think DQIX was the PS2 game. I think regular DS got a remake of DQ7, too, didn't it?

DQ IX was a DS exclusive. DQ XIII was on the PS2 but is coming to the 3DS early next year.

ETA: There is no regular DS version of DQ7

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Good lineup for October PS+. If you haven't played it yet, the Transformers game is actually a good one.

Resident Evil (HD), PS4
Transformers: Devastation, PS4
Mad Riders, PS3
From Dust, PS3
Code: Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~, PS Vita
Actual Sunlight, PS Vita

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

dola

ASA Investigating No Man’s Sky’s Steam Advertising | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

The internet's flipping out.....and it should be. SO excited.

Rockstar Just Got Everyone Talking With One Simple Image [Update]

[dacman]

The picture they posted this morning is definitely Dutch's gang -- so a prequel it is.

Insta-buy for me.

Spoiler

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Interesting to look back on this article given the RDR teaser.

This is the map you'll be playing in Red Dead Redemption 2 | TechRadar

[Kodos]

It's funny. Westworld has recently gotten me in the mood for some RDR.

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by dacman

Insta-buy for me.

Yuuuuup. RDR has been my favorite RockStar game. Really looking forward to getting back into that universe and hoping this one lives up to the last one.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

I love that there's a new one coming out, but I'm a little disappointed they settled for "RDR2" instead of giving it a new title.

[bob]

Any thoughts on the new Nintendo system?

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/nin.../1100-6444626/

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by bob

Any thoughts on the new Nintendo system?

Abnormal Traffic Detected

A clever bit of hardware that I probably won't buy. For mobile gaming I have my phone, and for gaming at home I have my laptop and full game consoles.

[NobodyHere]

Originally Posted by bob

Any thoughts on the new Nintendo system?

Abnormal Traffic Detected

I'll get it next Xmas season most likely

Also, how come when I quote bob the title on the link says "Abnormal Traffic Detected"?

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Epic to see something like this in the States.

The League Finals Are Playing Out On Top Of A Giant Projection

[Galaril]

I am tempted to pick up the new special edition of Skyrim 5 with all three expansions included. Might wait for a deal or price drop.