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Post by Ex on Oct 27, 2018 1:14:44 GMT -5
I resurrected my play of Silent Hill 2 tonight. Spent an hour exploring the hospital. I did everything you could do up to the part where you have to open the box with a bunch of locks on it (this series has a serious lock fetish). I got frustrated with that, and checked a walkthrough. On normal difficulty, one of the puzzles you have to figure out to open the box is unintuitive to say the least. It requires you to use the item combination system in a way that was never explained, and also initiates usage choices in the item menu that aren't evident under normal circumstances. Another puzzle in the hospital that annoyed me, was having to check a jacket twice to find an item. Normally you'd just check a location, and if there's nothing there, move on. Why would the designers expect the player to check a previously searched location all over again, for no apparent reason? That's just dumb design ( that reeks of trying to sell an official strategy guide). I've decided I will just play SH2 with a walkthrough going forward, because this game's "puzzles" are kinda junk to be blunt about it, and said puzzles aren't the point of the experience anyway. Neither is the wonky combat for that matter. I believe that the "point" here is the atmosphere and slowly evolving story. That stuff is why I'm continuing to play SH2. I'll admit that SH2's "feel", plot, and mystique are definitely intriguing... good even. To offset that praise, I'll say the tangible -gameplay- of SH2 is not much fun to me. Constantly checking locked doors, beating down the same nurse over and over, while reading scraps of textual exposition... those things aren't exactly riveting experiences cumulatively. Right now I think this whole shebang would have been better off as a film or novel, than it is as an expression of mechanical interaction. However! I'm not saying that I think SH2 is good or bad, at this point in time. Once I finish this game I'll offer my full opinion as to its worth. Hopefully using a walkthrough can expedite the process; I'd like to get back to Shadow Hearts: Covenant before I forget what I was doing in that game. Edit: Has anyone here tried it? I own, and have sampled, Folklore on PS3. The game's got very nice graphics, and really cool monster designs. I liked its European fairy tale atmosphere. I stopped playing it though when I realized you have to replay nearly every level twice over, alternating between two protagonists. That is to say, once you beat a level with one protagonist, the game expects you to replay that same level over again with the other protagonist. I'm not a fan of repetition in general, and this concept was clearly done as an artificial longevity contrivance. It might not be a deal breaker for you, I don't know. At the time I was rather annoyed with the cheap time extension tactic and put the game away.
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Post by Xeogred on Oct 27, 2018 5:25:00 GMT -5
Get a few key items in a dungeon area... might have to use them or combine them.
I'll never get why you think the map system is bad in these games. Would you have rather the blank rooms and doors not be interactable, thus it would be even harder to back trace where you've been and haven't, you'd probably be triple checking doors and areas again? I guess maybe I'm the weird one for enjoying maps in games, I like using them a lot.
Hey, even I got stuck on the jacket part this time too haha. Glad you're using a walkthrough though and powering through. The hospital is the midpoint but the rest of the game gets a bit more linear.
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Post by Ex on Oct 27, 2018 11:08:51 GMT -5
I'll never get why you think the map system is bad in these games. Well I can't speak for the entire Silent Hill series, as there's something like a dozen games in it*, and I've only played the first two up to this point. The reason I don't like the map system in the first two games, is because it's not as convenient as it should be. The player must constantly reference the maps, so putting a mini-map on screen would obviously have been a boon. But the designers were firmly anti-HUD. That means immersion trumped convenience, or rather idealism outweighed common sense. And while there's a direct button to access the map, the map in SH1 and SH2 takes a good 2-3 seconds to load every time you push said button. The developers should have automatically loaded the map for the current area into system RAM, so that it would load instantly upon pressing the button, rather than loading off the disc every time. All that map-waiting adds up. Lastly with SH2, there's an obnoxiously loud paper-scraping-on-paper sound effect that plays every time you push the map button. Thus during the course of playing SH2, you're going to hear that stupidly loud abrasive sound effect hundreds of times. Stuff like that is why I don't like the map implementation in the first two SH games. I have no problems with maps in video games in general dude. I've played hundreds of games with well implemented map systems that caused no grief at all.
I'd rather the environments you explore not just be a series of huge multi-story structures full of mostly locked rooms. In both SH1 and SH2, all the environments I've played through have been exactly that. In SH1 it was a school and a hospital (then I quit playing), in SH2 it's been an apartment complex and (yet another) hospital. I'd simply appreciate more variety in the level designs than just big abandoned buildings. That level concept becomes very repetitive. I'm glad to hear the experience becomes more linear after this section. I'd rather the game focus on the moody atmosphere and plot exposition (the good stuff), rather than just solving more goofy puzzles while looking at a map every five seconds. *Including the weird stuff like the mobile phone games, arcade game, Vita hack 'n slash dungeon crawler.
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Post by Xeogred on Oct 27, 2018 15:54:33 GMT -5
This franchise is only downhill after the first four main Team Silent games.
Well I love the maps and level design in these games. The scale of the buildings seems more realistic than what we get in other games and it's almost eerie or extra claustrophobic being locked into segmented areas, like this is the only portion of the building the town wants you in. Contrast to Resident Evil, where those interior sections sometimes feel a bit more unrealistic with how spaced out the rooms and such are, though the Spencer Mansion is perfection. But I'm glad the level design and map systems in these games are entirely different and love both.
SH4 is entirely different and probably more your style... map design wise only. I think your reaction to this game would be priceless. After replaying SH2-4 again this month though I've decided it's my second favorite for sure now.
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Post by Ex on Oct 28, 2018 0:51:53 GMT -5
I made more SH2 progress tonight. I'm past the hospital, past the dark town, and am now saved at the Historical Society. During the scene where Pyramid Head chases James and Maria, I thought it was dumb that you get a game over if Pyramid Head actually catches Maria - despite the fact her death is scripted to happen immediately after the chase anyway. An example of why I'm using a walkthrough for this game now... So there's the shower room with yet another key in the drain. You can't reach the key with your hand. Later you find a hook (in the teddy bear). Try to use the hook at the drain, James says it's not long enough. Later you get a long hair from the box. Obviously you should combine the hair with the hook. But when you try to combine the hair and the hook (upon receiving the hair), the game says you can't do that. So normally a player would think "okay I need something else to combine with the hook then". Except what you actually have to do, is stand exactly in the pixel perfect right spot by the shower drain, and THEN try to combine the hair and the hook. Suddenly the game will let you do it. That sort of puzzle solving is unintuitive to say the least. Any reasonable game would let the player combine the hair and the hook into a special item, regardless of where the player was standing when doing so. But SH2 being purposefully byzantine (to sell that official Konami guide) goes out of its way to obfuscate things in silly ways. I've come to the conclusion that the whole "dark world" stuff in SH1 and SH2, is really just a way for the developers to force the player to re-explore large sections over again - just with the "darker" veneer. It's a simple way to artificially lengthen the game completion time by reusing the assets. Despite some qualms, I am very interested in this game's plot, and would like to see how things pan out for James. I can definitely see what nullPointer was talking about with all the symbolism. The story is solid stuff, I just wish there was more of it exposition-wise in tandem with tighter pacing.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2018 14:34:00 GMT -5
Well, there goes another game chock-full of multiple endings which just begs to be replayed. It's S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. Stalker was developed by Ukrainian studios GSC Game World (also known for the Cossacks series) and released in 2007. The game runs on their in-house X-Ray engine which allows for very large areas, complex NPC behavior and impressive lighting effects. Also, a day/night cycle and a weather system. The story of Stalker is loosely based on the eponymous Tarkovsky movie, which in turn is loosely based on the novel Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. However, the core concept is still the same: weird phenomena and alien artifacts started to appear in a certain area after a mysterious or catastrophic event. The government cordoned off the whole place and renamed it the Zone, but scavengers calling themselves Stalkers still venture inside the Zone to steal the artifacts for profit. And apparently, at the very center of it all there's a place which grants wishes to everyone who manages to reach it. This place is called the Golden Sphere (novel), the Room (movie) or the Monolith (game). In the game, the Zone is the city of Chernobyl as well as the surrounding area and the triggering event is the 1986 nuclear accident: smart move on the developers' part to combine an excellent work of fiction with an actual event. Playing as an amnesiac Stalker, you'll have to start from the bottom and make a name for ourselves - or at least not die: very unfriendly Stalkers, the Ukrainian army, radiation and other dangerous phenomena as well as mutated humans and animals are all out to get you. It's a dog eat dog world and you'll have to keep your eyes peeled at all time or you'll buy the farm faster than you can say Помогите! Combat is fast, tense and deadly. And it's all the more satisfying when you finally get your hands on some decent armor and you start taking down entire enemy squads with your assault rifle. It feels cathartic, to say the least. When you're not trudging through some swamp, forest or abandoned town, you'll be venturing underground. That's where the horror components of the game really come to life, where you can only guess what radiation-engendered monstrosities are prowling in the darkness and hope you can spot them before they can spot you. You'll also be collecting artifacts, which you can either equip or sell for money: while they give you some stats boosts, they often come with some serious downside too - that shiny stone that makes your blood coagulate faster might also increase your radiation levels. However, you can't pick up everything you see: the game has a restrictive weight system and your inventory can only hold so much stuff. Which I did find quite annoying here and there. The game does an excellent job in conveying the feeling that the world goes on regardless of the player: you'll often come across packs of dogs attacking some lonely NPC or even entire groups of Stalkers fighting each other. You always have the choice to pick a side, kill the survivors or simply mind your own business. The game is semi-open world and is divided in very large areas. The game autosaves whenever you move from one area to another: it also appears to autosave randomly if your last save was 1-2 hours ago or something along those lines. Which sounds good - and it is - but it also isn't, because this one time it autosaved right when I died and then I had to restart the entire game. Lost 6-8 hours of progress. Which is not to say you can't quicksave at will, but you know how I roll. After that, I took the habit to save manually whenever I entered a new area and things went fairly smoothly. Just like Thief, this is one of those PC games people swear by everything they hold dear that they just can't be played without quicksaving every other minute - which is 100% fine if you want to, but it's hardly necessary. I've played Stalker on the highest difficulty setting (Master) and aside from the very last area - which had radiation everywhere, forcing you to rush through every gunfight as your health constantly dwindles down - every time I died it was because of some dumb mistake I made rather than the game being overly cheap. I didn't like most of the secondary missions: kill all the mutants over there, go fetch me that item, rinse and repeat... what is this, a MMORPG? At least they're optional. The main quest and story are actually pretty good, but the presentation isn't too stellar. I didn't feel a particularly strong sense of purpose or a connection to any of the characters. It's all there, but it also tends to get buried underneath plethora of mediocre fetch quests. I'm sure there's more to it once you look into the other endings: I've got the 'Greedy' ending myself, which wasn't too great. But I did kill some wounded friendlies to get their stuff, so it felt deserved. That said, unlike Bloodlines, you can't really play Stalker in more than one way. Sure, there are many different weapons, but your weapon of choice is usually dependent on what ammo the enemies are currently dropping. Still, I can safely say that Stalker is the quintessential Eastern European shooter. There's nothing quite like it, and if you manage to overlook the occasional clunkiness and poorly presented main quest, there's an engrossing and rewarding experience to be found. I give this game 8 Cheeki Breekis out of 10.
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Post by Ex on Oct 28, 2018 15:05:09 GMT -5
That was an excellent review, and I agree with everything you said. I'm very glad you decided to play through S.T.A.L.K.E.R., because as you decreed... it's the quintessential European FPS. I'd add it's the best horror FPS ever made (that I've played anyway). Only System Shock 2 can challenge it, but SS2 is so different it's not exactly apples to apples. Memories! I haven't played this game since... either late 2007, or early 2008... I'm not quite sure. But around that time period was when I beat it myself. I remember being incredibly impressed with the experience. Not just the quality story, design, and gameplay... but those graphics! Seriously S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s graphics still look great even today. I also remember being impressed with the ballistics modeling. If you fired a sniper shot into the distance, you had to take into account the gravitational arc of the shot. Stuff like that. This game also gave me the heebie-jeebies more than once (those poltergeists!). But the world had moments of beauty too. Such as chilling with some fellow stalkers by a campfire while a dude played acoustic guitar. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. really is incredibly well made (well, using the latest bug fixes anyway), extraordinarily innovative in many ways, and remains somewhat wholly unique even today. Above all else, its immersion is incredibly palpable, I really felt like I was there, like the Zone was an actual world. I remember giving S.T.A.L.K.E.R. a 9/10 when I finished the game. IIRC I got the "Ruler" ending, but there are a lot of endings, and all of them are interesting. Unfortunately I still haven't played any of its sequels yet.
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Post by Ex on Oct 29, 2018 0:08:36 GMT -5
SH2 progress = I made it through the Historical Society, Prison, and the Labyrinth. I am now saved at the Lake View Hotel's lobby.
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Post by Sarge on Oct 29, 2018 12:18:25 GMT -5
Played through the first level of Thief Gold last night. Not sure if it's going to stick yet, but from what I've been told here, the overall tone of the game changes a lot deeper in. I may give it another go tonight, if I can keep from bouncing from game to game (or just wasting my time on the 'net).
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Post by Ex on Oct 29, 2018 12:40:29 GMT -5
I'm not sure if you meant the training level; "A Keeper's Training", or "Lord Bafford's Manor". Both of those missions are more about learning the ins and outs of the gameplay. The next mission "Break from Cragscleft Prison" is more interesting than those two combined. But the mission after that; "Down in the Bonehoard" is where I fell in love with Thief. From then on, the rest of the game is just straight up magic. I do hope you stick with the experience for a few more missions. I don't think it will take as long to click as King's Field did, and Thief is even better than King's Field. Which feels like sacrilege to even type, but is true nonetheless.
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