whatchu playing now

(bioshock significantly less sophisticated than system shock 2 iirc not-of-course-to-mention deus ex tho i do like the twist well enough)

I don't know those games. But xpost yeah I would, and have, about the way things are made. Like, I watch "Sunrise" and think, huh, this movie looks really cool for being 100 years old. I guess one distinction in my mind is that essentially video games often *are* special effects (and vice versa, given how much contemporary computer effects frequently remind me and others of video games), so when I see a 16 year old game that presages stuff I see in slicker, more contemporary games, I think that's pretty cool, too. Like the telekinetic power in "Bioshock," that's straight up something used in "Control." Though for all I know, maybe that's in a hundred games pre-Bioshock and 100 games since as well. But anyway, that's what I'm playing.

okay but proportionally to the age of the medium this is like being surprised by the sophistication of the empire strikes back

nevertheless i was taking "sophistication" in a fuzzy and technically incorrect way (as, like, "depth"), sorry, so if we are just talking about technology (+attendant accumulation of technique)-- like whoa i didn't know they did deep-focus photography back then-- whoa i didn't know they had physics systems-- yeah it's true that not much has changed between the ps3 and the ps5, either because of decadence or because not very much time has passed, or both. i am just maybe overly thingy about assuming video games actually "improve" w technological development any more than any other medium does

anyway ground zero for throwing havok-physics-enabled objects around with magic in a first-person shooter blockbuster that everyone played is half-life 2 (2004), which my literal dad is playing rn, that's been nice.

I can't even remember much of the original Bioshock because the much worse sequel displaced it in my memory.

I really wish the Orange Box was available on current gen consoles (same for Portal 2). :(

For some reason I thought people liked Bioshock, that's the only reason I'm playing it.

Oh they did, I remember liking it, it's just been so long that I can't remember much about the game itself.

You can play portal 2 on the Xbox series consoles! It was a free game on Xbox gold a few months ago. Tbh it’s a crime to play any of the other 4 games on console though; shooters should always be played with mouse and keyboard

Speaking of the Portals, both of them are on sale on Steam for $0.99 each or $1.48 together.

Lol, I don't think I've ever played a shooter with mouse and keyboard. Maybe the o.g. Doom, but that was just keyboard iirc. Haven't played a game on pc for many years.

I'm surprised at the sophistication of "Bioshock," especially for a 16 year old game.

would you say this about a movie

― difficult listening hour

if it was a 3d movie sure

i would be surprised if "scar 3d" was in any way sophisticated or even watchable in 2023

Maybe the o.g. Doom, but that was just keyboard iirc

you rc: a literally perfect control scheme, which m&k itself adulterated (out of axial necessity) before the gamepad did (out of demographic necessity)

m&k itself adulterated (out of axial necessity)

(the alternative being worse, as when you scrambled to find PAGE DOWN to tilt the gun up to shoot the stormtroopers on ledges in dark forces. fortunately they were stormtroopers)

If you can find a way to play some shooters on m+k Jordan then you owe it to yourself! I recently went from doom ps5 to pc with doom eternal and it makes such a difference

I almost mentioned Dark Forces! I did play that as a kid. I truly don't know if I could adjust to m&k now though, I'm so used to controllers.

I really don't play shooters anymore though. Sounds like Armored Core is going to be interesting with a controller.

I'd never played any shooters before I bought my Switch way back when, so when tried Fortnite (which was free and when everyone was talking about it) my reaction was basically, how the fuck do people do this? I literally had no idea there were people playing with a mouse and keyboard. Once I learned that, I realized someone with a controller really has no chance against that kind of precision. Fast forward to buying Doom 2016, and at first I might as well have been playing with my knuckles. It was impossible. So I lowered the difficulty and got a lot better at it, especially with gyro controls, though never finished it (both because it got too challenging but also because the port was janky). Fast forward again and I get a PS4, at one point buying Doom again (because it was on sale for next to nothing, and looked and played better), and once again the curve of learning with a controller was super tough. But somewhere in there I played one of the Wolfenstein games, and I eventually figured things out. Same with other shooting games.

So my long story short limited experience/experiment is that different games are designed with different degrees of pinpoint precision, but many are maybe slightly more forgiving than they first appear (like Uncharteds or RDR2, which I know shooter fans criticize for being too easy) and with enough practice less precise tools like a controller can get you where you need to go, at least in a single player campaign. But a shooter against other people? I would guess a controller permanently puts you at a non-competitive disadvantage.

most shooters don't have console <-> pc crossplay

i feel like they have for the last decade or more?

online fps is its own thing tho, you might as well be fully on board or just not into it, it doesn't feel like a world worth half-arsing

oh maybe now that every game is its own little social media platform instead of the console OS being one

Back into RLcraft this week, the minecraft mod that makes the game both brutal and beautiful to play.

Will's review corner: Baldurs gate 3 really is that goof holy fuck

Good*

Finished "Bioshock." Thought it was pretty good! Certainly felt pretty original. I know the third one is particularly divisive, but was one of you saying the second one was disappointing, too?

Oops, I totally forgot there was a Bioshock 2, I was talking about Infinite.

yeah infinite is a legendary dud, one of the most hyped games of all time at release and pretty much everyone hates it now

what about black & white

i mean, how does it compare. i'll take my answer off-air

black & white not on the same order of magnitude of backlash

i won't hear a bad word said against B&W, you could cast spells using the mouse! and throw a ball for your pet and they would fetch it and and and and, oh.

Anyway, maybe I'll play Bioshock 2. The first one felt pretty brisk and while not always easy, not too challenging.

I keep postponing a giant backlog of never-played sprawling epics old and new: Witcher 3, Tomb Raider(s), Ghost of Tsushima, Grand Theft Auto V, Horizon Zero West, Skyrim, etc, plus a bunch of intriguing indies (Tchia, Dredge, Kena ...) and some Resident Evil games (I've never played any of them). And I'm sure a dozen other games that I forgot I bought. Sigh.

OK, right from the start "Bioshock 2" offers a clever inversion of the first game that's immediately drawn me in.

yeah, Bioshock 2 is a banger for the most part. Many people consider it superior to the first one. Make sure the version you're playing has the Minerva's Den DLC in it as that is an essential part of the experience.

It does! Is it integrated into the game or do I play it separately/after I finish?

It's standalone, so you can play it separately after you finish the main campaign.

Not that you asked Josh, but from my own personal experience

Skip: ghosts, gta, horizon (horizon is borderline into the next category tho)

See if you like it: Witcher, tomb raider, Skyrim

Play: intriguing indies, resident evil (everything)

Currently playing Pikmin 4. It’s my first one and damn is it fun, cute, stylish, addictive, a joy, what I want from a game. Glad to have a series I can now dip into if I’m in a gaming lull (i.e. never).

Also just installed 20,000~ emulated games onto my steam deck and playing the very fun game of scraping all their info/box-art while never playing more than 3 of those games. Hording is a very fun hobby if you can confine it to the digital realm

Thanks for the tips! My backlog is actually probably four (or more?) times as big, but it's always good to learn what people gravitate toward.

My “currently playing” log is about the same. It’s a serious problem but it also means I literally never have a backlog because I just play the first hour of every game I have an interest in. I blame ps1/ps2 era demo discs for this habit

I'm jealous that you get to play Res Evil 4 for the first time.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it! I did have a GameCube, but back then I think I only played a bit of it, and maybe a bit of RE Zero? I'll be mostly going into all of them blind, and by them, I mean *them*, since I know I have 2, 3, Biohazard and Village already, and will get RE4 when it drops down to $25 or so.

Brotato

inspired by Vampire Survivors but with a more tower defense vibe. It has a very well designed stats system where you sacrifice some stats to improve others, and that allows many different play styles to work. You can maximin the stats, or you can, say, only use knives and sacrifice your range stat. There's some stats that do nothing when negative, so you can decide to have no hp regeneration and boost the stats that come with a reduction in hp regen.

My only gripe with it so far is that the weapons are boring -- there's knives and guns, and not much else. In VS I rarely used the ice/fire wands because they were boring, and in this game half of the weapons are guns which are a lot like them.

Re: Bioshock Infinite being a dud - I don't think that's the consensus. It's 93 on Metacritic (user score of 8.6, so it's not just critics), and it's in Wikipedia's list of *List of video games considered the best.*

I loved all three and would rank 'em: Infinite > Bioshock > Bioshock 2.
Bioshock 2 starts off a little slowly (if I remember correctly), but it warms up - and it has a lot of tension/dread, like when you harvest ADAM and that's like a signal for everyone to come rushing at you.

I might get the collection ($10 on the PS store right now) for the DLC, which I've never played. And it'll look better than the versions I played on Xbox 360.

Yeah, Bioshock 2 has been a lot more tense than the first one so far. Harvesting ADAM is kind of crazy, but I just had my first Big Sister fight, and it was tougher and more intense than anything in the first game.

I would recommend playing the original re4 over the remake Josh. It’s a seminal game, great to play for “gaming history” reasons, but it’s also a far more interesting game than its remake. I’m assuming you were talking about the remakes with 2 and 3? If you’re doing those (which I recommend), 4remake is just a reskin and the original comes across as much more interesting in its gameplay, style, story and graphics.

This is not to put down 4remake! It’s still a great game, but the original is just something special

Currently playing FF origins: Strangers of paradise. It is a great game that got some slander at launch due to lame reviewers not respecting its B-movie humour (and essential aspect of any great game) and some technical limitations (just buy a better graphics card or drop your resolutions geez). Apparently this plays kind of like Diablo? But I have no trouble is stating it is 1000x the game diablo is due to the fact that Blizzard as a company has no soul and this is bloody FINAL FANTASY made by TEAM NINJA. like how did this not blow up!
You get to hack, you get to slash, you get to level, you have a job system (the greatest system in all of gaming), you get great cutscenes, you get to min, you get to max, you get to press the "o" button to do a doom-esque glory kill which turns your enemies into crystal. absolutely top tier stuff, 10/10, not kidding.

Also I did just finish ff1 and the whole modern actuon b-movie retelling of its plot with the most one-dimensional characters ever is actually really charming. Seeing those NES villages blown up in ps5 graphics and travelling through the world map, it’s very very nice

i should try that one again, i shelved it because it ran really poorly on my 2017 gpu but maybe they've fixed it, it seemed more like a bug preventing the lower graphics settings from working than actually being that gpu intensive

Yeah sorry I was being facetious about the whole graphic card thing. I'm playing with a 2020 rtx 3080 at locked 120fps, max graphics, ultrawide 1440p, no DLSS, no dips. I would think you could get at least a stable 60 with a 2017 card? If it still struggles give this mod a try.
https://www.nexusmods.com/strangerofparadisefinalfantasyorigin/mods/4

I wouldn't say the RE4 remake is a reskin,there are some substantive differences both in how it plays and in different segments and boss fights. But I do agree that it's way better to play the original first, and I appreciated the new one for the novelty and new content after playing the original to death.

Ha, it seems unlikely that I will play the original for $10 when I'm waiting for the remake at $20, especially when I have the other recent Resident Evil games and have never played any of them before, but maybe!

I meant RE4make is a reskin of re2/3make (which are all great, though fundamentally the same game).

Oh right, but isn't it more like they remade RE2 & 3 in the style of RE4?

(I haven't actually played the 2 & 3 remakes, maybe I should)