🚀 go-pugleaf

Not to much, hey it is August.

One thing I did was to buy myself a really cheap used PS3 to catch up on 
PS3 titles.
The first game I now have been playing on this system is an old love of 
mine which I never finished on the Wii and which simply never really 
will run properly on PC emulators

Okami, the PS3 is the only system which has this game in HD and as I 
said no emulator really emulates this game perfectly yet.
(Tried it on a Wii emulator and a PS2 emu, the PS2 emu runs somewhat 
better but some spells are a pain due to positioning problems caused by 
the emu).

Also Capcom basically has written this game off and will never port it 
to another system again, I guess. Also although the developers want to 
do a big sequel (there is a small one for the NDS) it wont happen, I guess.

A short description of a game. Okami originated on the PS2 in its last 
days and is one of the gems of this system. It is basically a Zelda 
clone from Clover Studios (which is now Platinum games)
but the thing is it is better than Zelda in many aspects.

You basically play a wolf godess and the entire game focues around 
beating the usual evil which has overtaken the land of Nippon.
The art style is cell shaded japanese paintings and the games fights and 
puzzles solving is centered around spells, which you can cast by drawing 
symbols to a paper (similar to what Arx Fatalis did)

The game itself is a uniuque mix of artstyle and 3d zeldaish gameplay.

Unfortunately it is such a nieche game that almost no one played it. 
Capcom tried to recover the costs by porting it to several systems.
The PS2 the PS3 and the Wii. With the PS3 version being the only HD 
version so far in existence.

Unfortunately this game will never see a pc port, the spellcasting 
system would be perfect for the mouse and there are not to many Zeldaish 
games on the PC anyway, so it is playing it on the console for now.

If you have the chance check out this game, it is worth it.


Werner




Am 02.09.16 um 10:10 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:
> It's been a weird summer here. The weather has varied from unbearably
> hot to cool and rainy, often alternating between the two on a daily
> basis. It's made it hell to actually enjoy the outdoors - whenever I
> have the time to go into the great outdoors, the weather has
> inevitably shifted to the worse, while all gorgeous days seem to
> happen when I'm stuck in the office. The end result is that I spent
> more days than was probably healthy sitting inside playing computer
> games. Not that's a bad thing, of course.
>
> So, another month passed and here we are in our usual thread. So let's
> just get to it and share our play-lists already; you all know the
> drill.
>
> Me first.
>
> --------------------
> Short and Sweet
> --------------------
> * SOMA (continued from last month)
> * Planetbase (new)
> * The Witcher 1 (replay)
> * Wolfenstein Old Blood (replay)
> * The Beginner's Guide (new)
> * Call of Duty Ghosts (new)
>
> TL; DR
> ----------
>
> * SOMA (continued from last month)
> I had a hard time finishing SOMA, despite how much I enjoyed the first
> half of the game. The game still sweats atmosphere, and its story is -
> if not particularly novel - at least interesting enough to keep me
> playing (although the stupidity of a protagonist unable to grasp the
> situation despite having it explained to him three times did grate).
> But it was the stealth gameplay - which took far greater prominence in
> the latter half of the game - that ultimately soured the experience.
>
> The problem isn't the stealthing itself, although the lack of options
> and variety were somewhat troublesome. The actual mechanic worked well
> enough. Rather, it was the enforced powerlessness that quickly became
> tiresome. You can't fight the monster, so all you can do is run and
> hide... and after a few such encounters this very rapidly becomes
> tiresome. Even worse is the idea that you can't even look at the
> monster without going insane (sorry, electro-magnetically corrupted).
> It's a game about cowering in a corner and waiting endlessly for the
> monster to pass. There are better ways of making a player feel
> vulnerable; rather, I just felt bored.
>
> Still, the game was rather pretty (in a gory sort of way), and the
> mood of the game was wonderfully portrayed. The exploration was fun; I
> just dreaded the encounters with the monsters, and not in the way the
> developers had hoped. It might have been more bearable in shorter
> bursts, but at a cost to its wonderful atmosphere.
>
>
> * Planetbase (new)
> In 1994, Sierra released an little game called "Outpost", that
> promised to let us fulfill all our sci-fi fantasies of creating our
> own colonies on far-off worlds. With impressive SVGA graphics,
> attention to realism and gameplay liberally cribbed from the
> award-winning SimCity games, it was expected to be one of the great
> classic games of the era. However, Outpost is now better remembered
> for unfulfilled promises and technical ineptitude so bad that even its
> sequel distanced itself from the original title's gameplay by becoming
> an RTS. The city-builder-in-space genre has remained relatively barren
> ever since...
>
> But playing Planetbase, I'm reminded more of Outpost than might be
> assumed from the superficial similarities. Planetbase is - fortunately
> - nowhere near as buggy as that infamous game but it does suffer from
> another commonality: a lack of content. Don't get me wrong; the first
> hour of gameplay is quite fun as you struggle to create a
> self-sufficient base, tacking together habitation, utility and
> production modules. Early carelessness can cost you the game before
> you even get started. But once you get past the first hurdle, the
> difficulty curve effectively disappears and the only "challenge" is
> how big a base you want to build. Even that isn't particularly
> engaging given the limited size of the map and the tiny scale; after
> ten hours, my base covered half the map and topped out at a population
> of about 300. The lack of tiles is a significant problem; there are
> only around 20 structures to choose from, and they you'll have built
> at least one of each within the first hour. Each structure can be
> individually furnished, but once again, there just aren't enough
> furnishings to play with. The game is also hamstrung by how severely
> it limits where you can place each structure. Equally, it is
> exceedingly difficult to raze-n-rebuild if you want to streamline your
> design later.
>
> Also similar to Outpost, the game lacks comprehensive and detailed
> information about your colony; there isn't, for instance, an easy way
> to determine how many resources I have, or how many biologists versus
> workers versus engineers I have (what charts the game does offer is
> full of un-intuitive icons rather than easy-to-understand text). Its
> interacting systems are also disappointingly simple, which is another
> reason the game lacks any real challenge. The AI is also fairly
> stupid, and I had colonists die of starvation rather than walk two
> rooms over to eat from the fully-stocked canteen. Planetbase does
> throw a few "disasters" at you but - again - these are both so mild
> (and your inability to actually do anything about them) that you can
> pretty much ignore them.
>
> In the end, Planetbase feels like an early-access game in early alpha,
> one where they intend to add more content later once... except its
> being sold as a finalized product. It's a disappointing product all
> around... and thus well deserving of assuming Outpost's long-vacant
> throne.
>
>
> * The Witcher 1 (replay)
> I /really/ want to replay the third game of the series, but I've set
> myself the goal of playing through the first two games first that I
> might experience the totality of the entire saga (one of my issues
> with my first play-through of the Witcher 3 was that I'd forgotten
> much of the plot of Witcher 1 & 2. Unfortunately, neither of those
> games were particular favorites of mine. Nonetheless, like a child
> promised ice cream if he just finishes his Brussels sprouts, I
> earnestly attempted to work my way through the older titles.
>
> Not that I truly disliked the first Witcher; in many ways, it felt
> like a breath of fresh air when it was released in 2007. In an era
> when Bioware-style RPGs dominated, its grey-on-grey morality and
> meaningful choices were a refreshing change, and the scope of the game
> is still impressive today. While many RPGs have you determine the fate
> of a kingdom, few offered the same feeling of being able to determine
> its soul as you navigated the treacherous political and
> racially-charged waters of a nation on the brink of civil war and
> genocide. Unfortunately, the gameplay itself was not as well-polished.
>
> The actual mechanics - while somewhat clunky - were acceptable; I got
> to enjoy the combat - with its dependency on properly-timed
> mouse-clicks- after a while just because watching the protagonist leap
> and dance about as he slaughtered monsters was so much fun. The
> alchemy - source of the hero's powers - was less fun, just because the
> character's inventory was so small. An infinite stash was available to
> hold the excess, but it was always so tedious to get to - usually four
> or five loading screens and an annoying conversation away - that it
> was frustrating to use. The maps were gorgeously rendered and
> impressively sized - especially in comparison to many of the Witcher's
> competitors of the time - but the game overstayed its welcome far too
> long before opening up the next region. The swamp - where probably
> half of the quests take place - very quickly became tedious.
>
> Worse, the story just couldn't support its own plot, with characters
> and events being haphazardly introduced, then ignored for an act or
> two, only to suddenly have relevance 20 or 30 hours of gameplay later.
> This becomes much more noticeable in the late game, when I was thrust
> into the political intrigue and realized I had no idea who most of the
> people were, what their factions represented, or why I should care one
> way or the other. There is a lot of useful detail provided in in-game
> books and glossaries, but I found these dry and - thanks to the tiny
> font - painful reading. There's a clever and mature tale buried in the
> game but it does little to make it accessible to the player.
>
> Still, while playing The Witcher was often a tedious slog, it was
> generally a rewarding one. Despite its age, the game was still fairly
> good looking and it is still a more adult adventure than most CRPGs on
> the market today (and not just because of the sophomoric sex scenes).
> It just takes a lot more effort.
>
>
> * Wolfenstein Old Blood (replay)
> The Old Blood is a forgettable game, in that - just a week after
> finishing it - I'm having a hard time remembering any specifics about
> the title. I do remember that I generally enjoyed myself while playing
> it, but it doesn't stand out as one of the great classics. It's story
> was typical Michael Bay-ish bombast saddled with overly-serious
> narration that would make Max Payne blush in embarrassment and skewed
> with the over-the-top gunplay and gore. Similarly, for a game which
> lets you dual-wield chain-guns, it has an unusual reliance on stealth
> as a primary driver of its gameplay. That's probably because the
> actual gameplay was otherwise so short on diversity, lacking variety
> in guns and things to use said guns upon. Still, the graphics were
> colorful (in a Nazi-grey
> sort of way) and - while there weren't any outstanding set-pieces -
> engaging enough nonetheless. It's a solid B-list title that I played
> for a few hours as a palette cleanser between other, better games.
>
>
> * The Beginner's Guide (new)
> The Guide isn't a game. It's another one of those increasingly popular
> "walking simulator" narrative games. This one was created by the same
> developer of the amazingly funny "Stanley Parable", which was one of
> the few narrative games I actually feel is worth playing (but only
> once, since the magic is lost on replaying it). Unfortunately, The
> Beginner's Guide doesn't even offer that much.
>
> Purportedly an exploration of an avant garde game designer's own
> developmental history, it is arguably an autobiography or just a
> tale-tale. What it isn't, is particularly enjoyable as it consists
> entirely of walking through poorly rendered levels of never-released
> test-games while the narrator drones on at you. The biggest - and only
> - mystery is what it all means: was the developer, as the narrator
> insists, a misunderstood genius whose games were his only way of
> expressing his insecurities? Or was the "developer" just a
> representation of the narrator's own struggle with maintaining his
> creativity? Or is it something else? It's an interesting enough tangle
> that - fortunately - isn't wrapped up neatly by the end of the game
> but left to the player's own interpretation. Unfortunately, that is
> all the game has going for it. The "mini-games" aren't games at all,
> so there isn't anything to actually DO in this game except walk
> continually forward. There's no point to exploration since there's
> nothing to find, and the game (purposely) lacks in visual polish. It's
> all well and good to leave the meaning of the game up to the player,
> but that only works if the player cares enough about the product to
> spare it some thought. Unfortunately, the presentation was so tiresome
> that I just preferred to walk away from it and find something actually
> INTERESTING to think about.
>
>
> * Call of Duty Ghosts (new)
> There are currently 227 people playing COD: Ghosts on Steam; the
> servers are all empty and the few that have any players at all seem to
> be occupied entirely by griefers. Not that I care much about
> multiplayer, but you'll have to forgive me if I concentrate entirely
> on COD:Ghost's single-player mode.
>
> Which, of course, is going to consist entirely of bitching because -
> like all Call of Duty Games - the single-player in Ghosts is terrible.
> I know, moaning about the sub-par gameplay of the console-era Call of
> Duty games is like pointing out the brilliance of our nearest star or
> reminding everybody that water is surprisingly liquid, but I'm still
> surprised at how bad these games are. I mean, the developers pour tens
> of millions of dollars - the bulk of which go into the story mode -
> into these titles and I've never heard anyone - neither critic nor
> player - heap anything but scorn upon the single-player. The usual
> excuse is that people buy these games for their multiplayer, but I
> don't buy that; why spend so much on a game-mode nobody uses? There's
> obviously a significant segment that enjoys these stories.
>
> I will give the developers credit though; it's nice to play as the
> villain for once. The protagonists are brain-dead goons with severe
> daddy-issues working for a tyrannical empire with weapons of
> mass-destruction ready to be unleashed on the world. In a clever
> twist, you fight against the heroic rebels who turn those weapons
> against the evil empire, and - as protagonist - you are forced to use
> guerrilla and terrorist tactics to fight back against the underdog
> and.... wait, what? That's /not/ what the story is about? Because it
> sure felt like it. Despite all the rah-rah gung-ho America-is-awesome
> patriotic bullshit, it's hard not to feel as if I were the bad guy as
> I snuck into a city or unsuspecting enemy base and massacred and
> tortured the unsuspecting populace, especially after being shown that
> America had an orbital death-platform at the start of the game. And
> the hero got no points for smart, being - once again - completely
> unable to open doors without help and being punished if he strayed
> ever so slightly off the expected path. The game was so tightly
> scripted as to remove all agency from the player; it's almost as much
> a "walking simulator" as "The Beginner's Game" or "The Vanishing of
> Ethan Carter" (except at least those games allow you to wander about).
> I got so tired of it that I ultimately stopped even trying and I still
> finished the game. I ambled calmly through the hectic firefights when
> the game expected me to run; I didn't shoot the enemies except when I
> had to, and when I was forced to pull the trigger I did it
> haphazardly, never once using the iron sights. That I still got to the
> end of the game just goes to show how pointless my actual involvement
> was.
>
> Ghosts also felt oddly gimmicky, even for a Call of Duty game. In one
> mission, you are controlling a robot dog, in the next you have an
> remote sniper, then the usual death-from-above segments first
> popularized - and later overused - by the Modern Warfare games. I got
> the impression the developers were throwing anything at the wall,
> hoping one of these modes would "stick" by catching the interest of
> the player. None of them did. The game even featured a weird
> alien-shooting "horde mode" (not part of the main story line,
> fortunately) that felt so out-of-field that I was left more befuddled
> than engaged.
>
> Ghost's doesn't quite match the nadir of the franchise that was "Black
> Ops" but it does absolutely nothing to revitalize it either. I remain
> confused as to why this series has such prominence in the marketplace.
>
>
> --------------------
> And that's how I wasted an August, rather than visiting the beach or
> hiking or kayaking like I really wanted to do instead. What about you?
>
> What Have You Been Playing... IN AUGUST 2016?
>