whatchu playing now

i also am listening to king crimson! while playing slime rancher 2

Are there any games with heavy prog soundtracks? Lots of metal and, well, traditional video game music beats, but there need to be more game soundtracks with Mellotron and long weird instrumental freakouts parts.

lots of old japanese game soundtracks are clearly influenced by prog and jazz fusion. can't think of any with mellotron though

it still lives on in JRPG battle themes of course

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1weNnjzaXbY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GB-xej4GFc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0zBU_U1IHQ

First thing "prog soundtrack" made me think of was Chrono Trigger. And the SNES sample-based sound chip is sorta like a crunchy digital mellotron

xpost That stuff is more fuzak and Dream Theatre type cheese, though. I'm talking heavy dramatic stuff like Crimson.

I got my Steam Deck last week and have been mainly polishing off the latter half of Yakuza Kiwami so far. I have definitely fondly longed for the days of Yakuza 0 several times. Why is it always so hard to get Kiryu to face the general direction of the people who are hitting him with katanas -_-

Also grabbed the tactical RPGs Symphony of War and Songs of Conquest off last weekend's steam sale, have only tried the first one so far as it's verified on Deck , it definitely scratches a vaguely Vandal Hearts/Suikoden-y itch

Also tried:
Roadwarden - lo-fi low-fantasy moody gamebook style thing with Disco Elysium-style attention to conversational and narrative details, I liked the 90 mins I've put in so far but, in time-honoured Fighting Fantasy fashion, feel like I'm stacking up a trolley-dash worth of negative in-game consequences without realising it yet
Hellish Quart - realistic swordfighting mischief, lots of short fights that result in jarringly well-animated disfigurations, a bit (early access) bare bones but grimly compelling with impressive physics
Street Figher V Champion Edition - runs perfectly, none of my cloud saves worked so have just been redoing the trials with the more recently added characters, not sure the deck's d-pad or sticks will allow much more involved play but maybe I'll get used to it
Wind Waker HD - damn this machine is a miracle lol

xp please don't compare my precious Falcom Sound Team jdk to dream theatre

I've never played the Uncharted games, so I figure ... why not? Gonna just cruise through them all in order. First one is dumb fun so far, not bad for a game that's 15 years old (albeit snazzed up for the PS4, and performing even better on the PS5).

imagine how good it will be on a PS6

I am playing co-op Children of Morta and it’s so much more fun

this is kind of the general games thread?

most of this acquisition is game-related

https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/fandom-buys-tv-guide-metacritic-gamespot-1235391144/

Fandom is rolling up a suite of entertainment and gaming content properties — including TV Guide and Metacritic — in a deal with digital-marketing company Red Ventures worth about $50 million.

San Francisco-based Fandom acquired GameSpot, Metacritic, TV Guide, GameFAQs, Giant Bomb, Cord Cutters News and Comic Vine under the deal. The sites collectively attract 46 million monthly active users, according to Fandom.

i think gamespot was last good at least 20 years ago, gamefaqs once ruled but isn't as uniquely useful these days, giant bomb is probably better than gamespot. metacritic is still useful but scanning the lists of the supposedly most critically lauded games of the year often turns into a depressing experience, and i have no idea why. maybe someone else feels that way too. i read every single tv guide when i was a kid. there wasn't much reading material in our house.

GameFAQs is still pretty good for niche approaches to games, TrueAchievement has most of what I used to go to GameFAQs for and also pictures.

gamefaqs is still a valuable archive that will hopefully not get bulldozed, all the rest are whatever who cares

cnet sat on so many good web 1.0 sites. no idea how they stayed in business for so long.

metacritic for games makes it obvious that reviews of major franchises/labels are made positive to satisfy expectant fans, instead of being based on anything in the actual game.

yup. at this point most ppl reviewing games have figured out that sincerity and integrity over video games is not worth being harassed on twitter for a month by people who think 7 out of 10 is the gravest insult

yeah, i get why so some review sites gave up on scoring metrics altogether

video game reviews should use the on cinema bags of popcorn/bags of soda rating system

or the VideoHound's woof to 4 bones scale

Finished the first "Uncharted," was pretty boilerplate, but I kept it in mind that the game in a sense set the early standard for what Naughty Dog would eventually do and played it like it was a really cool R&D demo. I hear the second one is better.

Felt the same when I played it - it was fine. Pretty big gap between Uncharted 1 and The Last Of Us, in time and quality.
That's why I put off playing the sequels to this day. Should get around to them eventually, though

As I understand it, the writing and gameplay improves steadily through the series, with the 4th one and the Lost Legacy spinoff considered not just the best but a couple of the best games of their generation. And apparently they are better if you've spent time with the first three games, so I figured, sure, why not, they're not that long (for once).

Lost Legacy is great

Thief's End was very impressive but the mechanics all started wearing a little thin. Traverse, sneak, shoot shoot shoot, puzzle, cut scene, traverse, sneak, shoot shoot shoot, cut scene, etc. I felt manipulated or like a rat in a maze or something.

I feel like i've outgrown the linear action -> cutscene -> repeat style of game. I quit Marvel's Spider-man after the tutorial because I could see the pattern already.

"Spider-man" is a little more open-world than that. There seemed to be plenty to do independent of the plot (as such) and whenever I felt like getting back on track to the linear action -> cutscene progression I did. I still got bored of it, eventually, probably because the story/writing gap between scripted stuff like "Last of Us" or "RDR2" and stuff like "Spider-man" felt pretty huge. It's a good question, though, how to construct a good plot and characters without relying on that familiar linear action/cutscene/repeat pattern. "Control" seemed to successfully shake up the formula here and there.

Uncharted 2 is pretty much the same dumb fun as its predecessor, at least two thirds of the way through, but it's neat to watch the subtle evolution of the gameplay. Slightly better mechanics, more things to do, more impressive set pieces, that sort of stuff.

I feel like i've outgrown the linear action -> cutscene -> repeat style of game. I quit Marvel's Spider-man after the tutorial because I could see the pattern already.

press-x-to-win

come on, this isn't fair. you also sometimes have to find the transparent X on the screen. where the heck is it? oh, over there. it's somewhere. then, you might have to hold X, or tap it.

I have no history with these games or anything, but they're almost not really games, more like interactive cartoons or something?

there are games that are kind of like that (heavy rain is a decent one), but i was just exaggerating with Uncharted. Uncharted definitely has many, many "press X to climb the ladder" kind of moments, but it also has running around, timing, guns and stuff

To be clear, by "no history" I mean I missed that era of gaming originally so have no nostalgic affinity for these games. But the two I've been playing or played so far have been a kind of fascinating hybrids of stuff. Platforming, guns, puzzle solving, etc. Nothing particularly challenging (at least on normal), but I like how they integrate gameplay into narrative. That's something other games I've played for sure have done better, including Last of Us, but I can see how a series like Uncharted might have played an important role in single-player game evolution. Certainly they're the types of games I might show to someone who knows nothing about games to demonstrate what they're capable of doing, at least from a flash standpoint.

I guess Uncharted is kinda the king of this, but there was a total glut of games 15-ish years ago aiming for “cinematic” and it was such a depressing era. Copy/paste Ubisoft open world games, funneled through corridor whack-a-mole FPS’s, and press-x-to-win dumbing down of everything. Kinda gruesomely laid bar the rat and cheese mechanics.

I remember a journalist at the time describing this as "content tourism", like you are being driven thru a safari park and are supposed to ooh and ahh at the scenery.

hah! that's too cynical for me

apex

tbf to Naughty Dog, they at least did that thing better than most. I don't like the Uncharted games, but I found the two Last of Us games very engaging.

At some point I'll probably play nu-Tomb Raiders, I'm curious how similar they are to Uncharted.

The Tomb Raiders are a decent option if you want something similar. They share a lot of mechanics and have a similar mix of shooting stuff to exploration. TR has maybe slightly more puzzles and more focus on collecting and crafting. imo Uncharted's writing and acting is way better - the character interactions are more entertaining and it doesn't take itself as seriously.

Tinykin is very good. It's a Pikmin type game (i.e. little dudes increasingly follow you around), but the platforming is rock solid. The level design kind of reminds me of Katamari Damacy.

OK, finished "Uncharted 2." Follows the sequel formula of "same, but more," with bigger set pieces and scale/scope, plus some nice character beats and (even more) self awareness. Kind of like every "Indiana Jones" movie all at once, silly fun (where you are also a relentless merchant of death).

So looks like two years separates each of the first three games, and then a big gap of five years comes before the fourth? Curious what two more years of game design brings to part 3 but also curious what five years (and "Last of Us") brings to part 4.

I found Uncharted’s gunfights prohibitively difficult. Slightly easier in the sequel but still non-fun

I dig the decadent 2000s vibe though

Interesting. I'm playing on "normal" and it seems pretty easy to me. I think it helps that unlike, say, "Last of Us," all you have to do is take cover to automatically heal, then come out blazing when you're al better again.

the '00s Gears of War cover shooter formula, basically, right?

I dunno, don't know that one.

Started "Uncharted 3." It's fun to play these in quick succession, because it makes the slight changes/improvements/additions more apparent. In this one the enemy AI is more clever, as is the banter (relatively speaking; Drake is still the dumbest smart person on earth, or maybe vice versa). The puzzles are trickier, or at least more annoying, and the set pieces continue to grow. The escape from the burning castle early on was really well done, though every time yet another thrill slowed me down (falling beam! broken bricks! collapsing floor!) it got pretty funny. Graphics-wise, I know this was redone by Bluepoint, who are great, but stuff like water and foliage looks really good. Characters ... they move right, but the faces are still pretty cartoony, with uncanny valley glimpses of hyper realism. I have a hunch it will be a big leap to Uncharted 4/Lost Legacy, which have both also been optimized for PS5.

Because it was on sale I bought "Inscryption," which I'd heard such good things about. It does seem cool, but maybe it's because I've never played any of these card games (no Pokemon, no Magic, nada) I literally had no idea what I was supposed to be doing, or at least no idea what was going on. What I presume was the tutorial felt like the first round after the tutorial. I'll have to give it another shot when I have more time to pay attention.

i think the point of that one is that it does a bunch of cool subversive stuff with the genre so it might help to have played something like Slay the Spire that plays it straight first idk

Good (bad?) to know, thanks.

no matter what i think you'll still appreciate what they were up to w that game!

yeah i'm sure thats the case i just meant if you cant wrap your head around the core mechanic at all it might not be the best one to start on?

I'm sure I'll be able to eventually figure it out, I was just surprised the game sort of drops you right in with little to no preamble. Regardless, it'll be weeks before I get to it in earnest, lol.