What game are you playing?

[TedEH]

It makes sense to me that you can't jump in a game like that - both because visuals and gameplay serve very different purposes, but because aiming for ultimate freedom of movement opens up a huge can of design and implementation worms. I think that something as trivial as "let me jump" would throw huge wrenches in the tightness of the combat, leaving alone how detaching from rigid navigation generates so many edge cases.

There are some games where the movement expression is the core way you interact with the game (see: Mario Odyssey), but in GoW your core expression is the combat. The navigation only really has the goals of "let you see the world from the angles it was designed to be seen at" and "don't break the game's core systems". I think it works well in that regard. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[wankerness]

How the fuck do you guys remember all these names of the bosses/beasts?!?

I beat it last Wednesday night but still have a few side quests to wrap up. I can’t remember a fucking name of anything from that game!

I remember the ones that I'd already heard before from Norse mythology osmosis. I've never really read Norse mythology but I've played some videogames that use references (Assassins Creed Valhalla, Age of Mythology, other stuff over the decades) and seen the Thor movies. Sif, Odin, Thor, Freya, Heimdall, Garm, Thor, Angrboda, Loki, Draugr, Einherjar, etc are all represented in those things. So, it's fun to see the difference in portrayal for me (ex Thor as a drunken buffoon vs cool sexy guy; Heimdall as a little shit instead of Idris Elba) and I do remember that stuff. I'm usually terrible with character names in either movies or games and the reason I'm good with them here is just that it's working so much in areas I'm already familiar with.

 

[wankerness]

Just a minor gripe that popped up last night while playing Ragnarok while I was in the pub; how the fuck does a game with THIS kind of graphics work not allow you to move around tables and also doesn’t have a jump button?!

It’s like it’s incredibly well done in every aspect, except being able to move around certain areas…and you can only jump on shit if you’re right next to it.

Ted replied well. This is just a gameplay decision, not a limitation. I think Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the first game to really do this, and this is very much the same template (both games had a jump that was sort of tied to the same button as "interact" and only turned to jump when you hit areas set as "jumpable" or "climbable" or whatever). They decided they weren't going to make trying to exploit your way through areas ala jumping up mountains in Skyrim part of the gameplay. It's much more...curated. Much like a Naughtydog game. You see what they want you to see, there isn't much freedom.

 

[TedEH]

Finished the GoWR story (to the credits - didn't do anything post credits yet)

Spoiler

Man, some of the late-game story beats are a real punch to the gut, in a good way. I kinda wish I got to see what was in the weird green crack thing, but other than that, it feels like most of the rest of the major story lines got the payoff they deserved.

Edit: Actually, there's one or two things I kinda wish HAD happened but didn't.
The first game hinted at how Tyr + Kratos are able to travel between the mythologies but it's never explained. I kinda wish the cross-mythology thing had been expanded on.
But to go along with that - the whole time, I was seeing Kratos get closer and closer to his old self - and I was waiting for the payoff of the old theme music, but it never quite happens.
DUN.
DUNNA.
DUN-NA-NA.

 

[wankerness]

Yeah, it has a good story. I don't think it's quite Naughty Dog level, but it's definitely in that second tier that is mainly only occupied by like, Yakuza games or Nier Automata or something. Certainly way, way, WAY better than an Assassin's Creed game or Horizon Forbidden West.

I've been loving all the outrage about the "best story" nominations for the video game awards. Everyone's freaking out about how they included Elden Ring as a nominee. That game's story is vastly better than Horizon Forbidden West's, yet I don't see anyone complaining about the inclusion of that. I guess people just can't deal with alternative storytelling methods and grade story by how many voiced cutscenes there are. This all said, I bet God of War wins that award hands down. Though I don't have a clue what "Immortality" is and haven't played either Plague Tale game.

 

[TedEH]

Yeah, it has a good story. I don't think it's quite Naughty Dog level, but it's definitely in that second tier that is mainly only occupied by like, Yakuza games or Nier Automata or something. Certainly way, way, WAY better than an Assassin's Creed game or Horizon Forbidden West.

I don't play a lot of Naughty Dog games, but I honestly think GoWR was a better story than Last of Us Pt 1, having played both recently. GoW made me feel things where TLoU did not.

But I'd go a step farther in that I think GoW does a better job of including the gameplay systems in the story so that not only are they not dissonant, but they kinda fit the story themes.

 

[gabito]

I still see the first game as the result of SSM trying to be Naughty Dog narratively-wise. GoW Ragnarok feels different, not so dramatic, more adventure-like as in a Marvel movie maybe?

I think they are always first class Sony Santa Monica, but B tier Naughty Dog at most.

 

[wankerness]

TLOU part 1 I think is a bit more interesting thematically, especially that rightfully famous ending, and I think it has much better-drawn characters. I think your personal reaction of not feeling anything is down to personal reaction and not any kind of actual marker of lack of quality in comparison. Like, I definitely could see GOW:R's themes of forgiveness and being a better person being more appealing than TLOU1's questions of what it means to love someone and frequent nihilism. GOW:R is kind of a kitchen sink approach of throwing in tons and tons of crap when it comes to the actual plot, while TLOU is pretty focused. It just has good characters and as a result things work better than they maybe should have with how much the story beats are all over the place.

 

[TedEH]

I guess rather than thinking of it in a way that one has to "be better" -

I think TLoU is a "good story on paper", in the sense that you could academically deconstruct it and call it more value-full implementation of a narrative and themes etc.

GoWR on the other hand was more subjectively moving, as far as I'm concerned.

TLoU executed it's narrative well. GoW punched me in the feels.

Both good stories, but with different goals.

 

[RevDrucifer]

It makes sense to me that you can't jump in a game like that - both because visuals and gameplay serve very different purposes, but because aiming for ultimate freedom of movement opens up a huge can of design and implementation worms. I think that something as trivial as "let me jump" would throw huge wrenches in the tightness of the combat, leaving alone how detaching from rigid navigation generates so many edge cases.

There are some games where the movement expression is the core way you interact with the game (see: Mario Odyssey), but in GoW your core expression is the combat. The navigation only really has the goals of "let you see the world from the angles it was designed to be seen at" and "don't break the game's core systems". I think it works well in that regard. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I SAID I WANT TO JUMP DON’T BRING LOGIC INTO THIS

 

[TedEH]

Games are almost entirely made of logic. Sort of.

 

[wankerness]

I was eyeing a bunch of games on the black friday sale on PS store (Cyberpunk, DMC5, Stray, Ghostwire, Steelrising, Diablo II, Scarlet Nexus, and Death Stranding), but NONE of them are still on sale for cyber monday. Oof. Guess I'll just continue playing fromsoft games and stardew valley until that Witcher 3 remaster comes out in a couple weeks.

 

[TedEH]

Xmas is coming, which will mean tons of sales incoming. I'm banking on some patience paying off.

 

[wankerness]

Yeah, I'm sure it will. Just weird that they completely ended their black friday sale before cyber monday and what's up now has literally nothing I'm interested in. 25 for cyberpunk and the "utlimate edition" or whatever they call it for death stranding actually had me ready to bite, I just was being indecisive on which off that list I wanted the most. Guess they made up my mind for me! I think two years ago their end-of-year sale was incredibly good, but last year's was awful. We'll hope it's more like the one two years ago.

 

[wankerness]

I'm trying to start clearing out my old N64 and SNES games now (I have boxes and manuals for a lot of them). Ebay sure has gotten bad! They like, bury your listings unless you pay to "promote" them and they try really hard to encourage you to leave "allow offers" up, which results in no one bidding on anything and instead trying to offer you 50% of whatever you list anything as. Ugh. I should find a different place to sell!! So far I've only sold two of them (Turok and WWF War Zone) and both went for the minimum starting bid. I'm getting tempted to just list them as buy it now with free shipping and jacking the price up 200% cause it seems like that's the better path towards success with the instant gratification everyone seems to want on there now.

 

[TedEH]

Any time I buy from Ebay, I always just do buy-it-now and sort by lowest+shipping until I find something that doesn't look like garbage. The actual auction parts have become this meta-game of sniping and junk that I just don't care enough to play.

 

[wankerness]

Hmm, OK. So I guess I'll try buy it now on the next wave of these things and see if that's any more successful. I have some valuable games and it will bug me if I don't sell them for anything (ex body harvest with box/manual/etc in near mint, carmageddon 64, space station silicon valley).

I lost my star fox 64 box somehow! Darn it. Also somehow I still have boxes and manuals for games I sold off decades ago when I cleared out my SNES collection for a PSX. I guess I'll have to try selling those independently.

I think I'll probably hold on to Goldeneye and Donkey Kong 64 (long enough to finally finish it) and then get one of those cartridges that can load any rom you throw at it. Seems like they cost less than a hundred bucks, so it would be a good investment since I can probably get several hundred for all my current games.

 

[Nicki]

Hmm, OK. So I guess I'll try buy it now on the next wave of these things and see if that's any more successful. I have some valuable games and it will bug me if I don't sell them for anything (ex body harvest with box/manual/etc in near mint, carmageddon 64, space station silicon valley).

I lost my star fox 64 box somehow! Darn it. Also somehow I still have boxes and manuals for games I sold off decades ago when I cleared out my SNES collection for a PSX. I guess I'll have to try selling those independently.

I think I'll probably hold on to Goldeneye and Donkey Kong 64 (long enough to finally finish it) and then get one of those cartridges that can load any rom you throw at it. Seems like they cost less than a hundred bucks, so it would be a good investment since I can probably get several hundred for all my current games.

If you're into flipping games for profit, make sure you grab a physical copy of The Legend of Heroes Trails from Zero... preferably on both PS4 and Switch. They're eventually going to go up in value because they always do after a while. Trails of Cold Steel 1 when from $40 CAD to $130 CAD in a year.

 

[Ralyks]

From now on, when a company wants to make a retro/compilation game, they need to take influence from Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. This is an absolutely fascinating history lesson done extremely well. Lots of neat interviews, and great memorabilia and photos of games from their history. And if you're reading about a game and want to play it, one button and you're there. Didn't think a collection like this would end up on my yearly top 10, especially in such a short time, but this thing is awesome, and highly recommended for anyone with a nostalgia for retro gaming, and gaming history in general.

 

[Choop]

Finally have some free time since I wrapped up my web dev bootcamp...and the first game I played was the original Castlevania on NES -- it's fun! I also bought a few games on the most recent Steam sale that I may or may not get around to actually playing. Right now I'm kind of just in the mood to revisit classic games, and I know I mentioned Mega Man Legends a while ago, so I intend to play that again real soon.