Games you refuse to play.

[The Fair Lady]

^Yeah, shield stability annoys me too. It's one of the reasons why I'm having trouble with undead knights.

 

[Ryan Rash]

Any of the Monster Hunter games. I refuse to support Crapcom and can get the "buddying up to take on massive dragons" experience elsewhere (PSO2 and the upcoming Ragnarok Odyssey ACE).

 

[A-Stump]

Dark Souls is kinda hugely overrated

 

[Watcher]

Dark Souls is kinda hugely overrated

Why do you say that?

 

[Foof]

I refuse to play Halo.

 

[A-Stump]

Because it receives way more attention than it deserves? It has a paper thin story which has already been covered (and saying 'fill in the blanks' is an excuse for being lazy in my book) and at that what IS there just feels generic. The gameplay really isn't anything special and old hands at games won't really have trouble with the combat. It's basically following patterns and the only time I ever died was when I wasn't paying attention.

It's basically something people blown out of proportion. They acted like the difficulty would blow my balls off, it didn't. There was little story. And when you get far enough you can just exploit heals to make the game easy mode.

 

[The Fair Lady]

^I feel the exact same way about The Last of Us, minus the difficulty gripe.

 

[A-Stump]

I haven't played the Last of Us yet, I probably won't unless it gets down to ten bucks or something

Is it at least average?

 

[The Fair Lady]

Tbh I haven't played it either, and don't have any intention of doing so. Plot is meh, gameplay is boringly linear, didn't care about the characters (God I hate Ellie), ending is stupid, and the AI is broken as fuck. I think most people are just blinded by the graphics and voice acting.

It gets, at most, a 6.5 out of 10 from me. Call it unfair if you will, but I personally think it's okay to judge games without actually playing them if you know and have seen enough. And believe me, I've seen enough.

 

[A-Stump]

Well, I can't really say that's the truth. I'll cite Dark Souls again and say you could think it's way harder than it is from watching someone dumb on YouTube with it but then you get someone who isn't dumb and it just seems like a grind more so than a struggle. I get what you mean but there are variables to experiences.

 

[The Fair Lady]

I didn't say it's the universal truth at all, just that it's my personal philosophy. I'm well aware of being in the minority.

 

[A-Stump]

I've been playing Remember Me lately and I recall actually thinking it was going to be really cool. A major part everyone talks about is the ability to remix memories to get different outcomes. Well you can do that, but I'm almost done with the game and have done it a total of three times so I really feel cheated by the entire experience. If anyone else here has any inclination to play it, I'd say give it a pass...It's actually quite mundane for the most part

 

[Watcher]

Because it receives way more attention than it deserves? It has a paper thin story which has already been covered (and saying 'fill in the blanks' is an excuse for being lazy in my book)

brevity is the soul of wit

Dark Souls's attempt at storytelling was a very calculated thing. It could not have been done by accident or as you refer through laziness. The storyline of Dark Souls alludes to having a very large storyline that occured prior to the game's events that the player hears whispers of. Sees characters refer to. This allows you to view character relationships through multiple different interpretations.

Indeed this is done by a lot of stories. Most plays offer multiple interpretations simply because they don't offer a complete answer to the audience's questions. A great example is Hamlet which I quoted above. In Hamlet the audience is never directly told whether or not he is insane or the ghost of his dead father is real. It is up to the director or the audience to draw their own conclusions. It is not laziness to simply allow the player to make up their minds.

The gameplay really isn't anything special and old MANOS at games won't really have trouble with the combat.

The gameplay to Dark Souls isn't just hard for the sake of being challenging. It teaches you how to complete problems through trial and error and learning how to accept failure. This is far different of an approach that most other hack and slash games do.

They acted like the difficulty would blow my balls off, it didn't.

Then I await your playthrough of Dark Souls where you show how easy it is. I also suggest you get to a point in a game where you fight enemies such as this

[youtube]KCkfWFuVNro[/youtube]

Where you require very precise timing to dodge and attack

And when you get far enough you can just exploit heals to make the game easy mode.

The player stands still and cannot defend himself or attack if he heals. Many, many, many bosses can destroy the majority of the player's health while he is doing this unless you are aware of a boss's pattern beforehand.

Hell some enemies in the game cannot be attacked conventionally and require specific spells or weapons to hit. This is also something that is alluded to the player beforehand in a level by an NPC.

Because it receives way more attention than it deserves...
...It's basically something people blown out of proportion.

In a sea of games like this.

[youtube]JOHyD49DaeA[/youtube]

Are you really surprised people are drawn to a game that doesn't hold the player's hand?

 

[Carlson]

I haven't played the Last of Us yet, I probably won't unless it gets down to ten bucks or something

Is it at least average?

I've played and beaten it. To be honest, I love it.

Yes, it's linear in the sense that you don't influence the storyline. But I think that people are getting too hung up nowadays on demanding sandboxes and multiple endings and such, which doesn't really help with storyline; it takes more effort to make a storyline with multiple paths and endings that will actually satisfy the end user, rather than feeling lazy. Deus Ex gets away with it because its style allows for that kind of freedom. Grand Theft Auto and The Elder Scrolls can handle a sandbox environment because their individual storylines are rarely too deep. The Last of Us relies on its story and characters to drive it, and trying to move away from a linear story would prevent the writers from telling what they wanted.

That said, the gameplay itself isn't very linear. It's not a corridor shooter; you have multiple paths in some areas, and there's many sections where you get placed in a wide open environment that only walls off its absolute borders and get to figure out things for yourself. It's a difficult game by modern standards, but not at all unbeatable. You just need to think before you act and pay careful attention. It's not at all on the same level as Dark Souls, where you can get yourself wrecked in seconds just from walking down a hallway too fast. In The Last of Us, you just need to take stock of the situation you got placed in (the game is primarily based around specific encounters, like a room with X number of bad guys, rather than enemies sprinkled throughout the level) and make a game plan instead of rushing in and trying to play it like a cover shooter.

Also, the AI is pretty decent and I don't really get people calling it "stupid." It's not revolutionary or anything, but on my playthrough I didn't have any instances where the enemies did anything unusually dumb. People often laugh at how they ignore Ellie and other AI party members, but the game would be broken otherwise; a simple mistiming of Ellie's steps, which you have no control over, could and likely would ruin the entire plan. It's better for the developers to simply make Ellie invisible to unaware enemies instead of the headache that would ensue.

As for the plot and characters, that's up to you. I personally got invested in the game and characters, and I thought that the ending was appropriate; if I was in Joel's situation, I would have done exactly what he did.

 

[A-Stump]

We get it, Cuddlebug, you love the tits out of Dark Souls. You're not going to convince me I'm wrong, because I don't like it. I'm not going to convince you you're wrong because, you obviously worship it. This is how these things work.

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

I actually thought Artorias wasn't too hard. I guess because I'd been hearing how hard he was for a while, so maybe I was overprepared.

I refuse to play Alan Wake, because one of my friends would keep droning on about it forever. All I heard from him for a month was "blah blah blah Alan Wake blah blah". I knew nothing about the game except that he wouldn't shut up about it. I still know nothing about it because it can't be as good as he thinks it is.

 

[Carlson]

I actually thought Artorias wasn't too hard. I guess because I'd been hearing how hard he was for a while, so maybe I was overprepared.

I refuse to play Alan Wake, because one of my friends would keep droning on about it forever. All I heard from him for a month was "blah blah blah Alan Wake blah blah". I knew nothing about the game except that he wouldn't shut up about it. I still know nothing about it because it can't be as good as he thinks it is.

I'm a fan of it, and I want Remedy to get a sequel out in less time than it took for Max Payne 3. The actual gameplay and combat would never be enough to carry the game; if you wiped the storyline away and had nothing but the combat, you'd get bored. What makes it appealing is the story, atmosphere, acting, and music. It's essentially an interactive TV show, which unfortunately means that (like in a real TV show) the appeal depends on how much you care about the non-game parts.

 

[John Titor]

Anything with mandatory tank controls. I couldn't stand Resident Evil for that reason and I refuse to bother with 2 and 3. It's not challenging, it feels like the controller is jammed and coupled with the jump scares (not really scary ones mind you) and terribad camera controls; they lead you to cheap deaths that makes me want to yell at the TV. If you're a survival horror and the reaction I make towards you is anger, you're doing it wrong. Now, if you can turn it off ala Silent Hill and Fatal Frame, sign me up.

God of War. I played it and found it boring; especially when realizing the selling point was mainly the blood and gore.

Braid and Fez. I've been turned off by the behavior of their creators and I'd rather not give them a dime.

MMOs that require a monthly fee. I pay enough bills already, I'd rather not pay for something I don't have time for.

 

[Saney]

Anything with mandatory tank controls. I couldn't stand Resident Evil for that reason and I refuse to bother with 2 and 3. It's not challenging, it feels like the controller is jammed and coupled with the jump scares (not really scary ones mind you) and terribad camera controls; they lead you to cheap deaths that makes me want to yell at the TV. If you're a survival horror and the reaction I make towards you is anger, you're doing it wrong. Now, if you can turn it off ala Silent Hill and Fatal Frame, sign me up.

God of War. I played it and found it boring; especially when realizing the selling point was mainly the blood and gore.

Braid and Fez. I've been turned off by the behavior of their creators and I'd rather not give them a dime.

MMOs that require a monthly fee. I pay enough bills already, I'd rather not pay for something I don't have time for.

I have no idea how the hell you're supposed to play a survival horror game if it has tank controls. It's impractical as hell.

 

[c-no]

Braid and Fez. I've been turned off by the behavior of their creators and I'd rather not give them a dime.

I know of how the creator of Fez acted. I assume the creator of Braid is similar then, correct?