V I D E O - G A M E S - I N - 2 0 1 9

[Ben]

maybe write what you played last year, what you're looking forward to this year

[Ben]

games from last year i played last year:

monster hunter world
spiderman
maplestory 2
smash ultimate
fallout 76
lego harry potter

also played:
path of exile
rust
kingdom hearts series
rock band 4

(and a bunch of VR shit)

i have a hard time picking game of the year from what i played because none of them felt like a new experience to me. mhw was really the first game i took seriously from the series but ultimately felt like "monster hunter", spiderman was just a rehash of arkham games + breath of the wild, maplestory is a waifu mmo, fallout 76 was not only a chore visually due to being full of re-re-used assets but also an embarrassment, and lego harry potter was a re-release of old games and just a lego game at the end of the day

smash was also just a smash game, though i do appreciate the effort put into it so i would probably say that's my game of the year. but, yawn

[Ben]

my best gaming experience was either getting a vr headset and playing in that for the first time, or getting my first two platinum trophies in kingdom hearts 1 & 2

i did absolutely everything gameplay-wise you can do. in my supreme autism, i'd love to max all stats to 99 or get 99 of all items and etc, but that's a ways away

if i hit my head and forgot about video games and were to play one that came out this year, it would be spiderman i guess? but maybe smash

[Zomber_Jesus]

I've had very little time to play games last year and that resulted in it being year of the souls. After trying out both the witcher 3 and god of war and being dissatisfied with the skill cap and combat I just accepted that I get most enjoyment out the time I invest into ds3 or 1. Bloodborne was a disappointment, unfortunately, and I'm excited about diving into ds2 and seekiro

[Ben]

i loved bloodborne and dont like the souls game, what disappointed you?

[Zomber_Jesus]

i loved bloodborne and dont like the souls game, what disappointed you?

1. The healing system giving you a cap of 20 blood vials and also requiring you to grind for them almost every time you get into a tight spot. The thing I love about souls is that after dying you can get back into the fight immediately. In Bloodborne after a certain point your only option is to farm which also negatively influences how you ration your heals beforehand. Also 20 in the long run is just so fucking much I don't know what the idea there was.

2. The beast archetype making up 80% of the enemy and boss pools. This is extremely subjective like everything else I dislike, but it feels very bland to have so much encounters with things that generally walk on four legs/flail their claws around wildly as their main attack. I like it when enemies have a variety of weapons because that lets you divine their strategy before engaging and because dueling a foe feels better than whacking a dog with a stick.

3. Boss design is mostly annoying. The only fights I like coming back to are guacamole and the wet nurse, possibly shadows of yharnam. Again it's that so many of the bosses are just hairy quadrupeds whose movesets are basically claw swipe, charge and 5 second rampage. This especially grinds my gears because using blood rally against enemies with these attacks is almost impossible. First of all you can't even approach them when they're frenzying and second they're almost unstaggerable. My most hated example which works against the design philosophy of encouraging aggression even further is blood starved beast, who not only occasionally turns his entire body into a hitbox for prolonged periods but also intlicts slow poison, which is twice as fast as dark souls toxic for some reason??? It just turns the match into hide and seek because I definitely don't want to waste time grinding for antidotes.

4. Unsatisfactory and convoluted world design. Huge chunks of the game feel unfinished even very early on. The first boss you encounter is a dead end desipte looking like it's there to stop you from crossing a bridge. After beating Gascoigne you're led to old yharnam which also turns out to be optional if you pay 10000 souls, then hemwick-charnel, also optional, then after three bosses you're meant to backtrack to yarghul, the completing of which teleports you to slime university and mensis,which can also be accessed earlier and where the game basically ends without warning. I'm frustrated by the fact that choosing the false dialogue option with gherman forces you into ng+ with no warning. I was not into bashing my way through the game again just to fight two more bosses. 

5. Chalice dungeons. I think it was a bad decision to place so much unique content into a part of the game that's procedurally generated and also requires so much god fricked grinding for materials

All that said, I still like bb better than 95% of games I've played, I just think it's great design elements don't get to shine the way they should

[Ben]

my response, as someone who loved bloodborne a whole lot but doesn't like the other souls games:

1. i agree, i think there was a period of me having no vials at all but then eventually i got many without having to even think about it. i dont really remember having to farm

2. i have the opposite complaint- i hate the "the knight in my castle has a mean old dragon" aesthetic of what ive played in souls (i know im oversimplifying). i like that there's beasts, and then theres.... something much darker and deeper going on. i felt like there was variety, though yes thats subjective. everyones gonna be satisfied at different levels

3. thats funny, because the fights you mentioned are the ones i beat in 1 or 2 tries and so dont remember so well at all. i loved the look and feel of fighting eeeeveryone, i think. they all had their cool design (visually). as far as fight design, you may be right, but i think your points in general speak to the technical aspects of the game and its gameplay and im a gaylord for the story/aesthetic/visual design. i also didnt really have trouble with getting my health back or visceral attacks

4. i think this is one of the strongest aspects. it may seem like im being an apologist, but the game is a lovecraftian story of things untold. nobody points to a diagram and explains how the story works, that its ending, or otherwise. i think if one reads into it s'more, it makes more sense, and thats what i love about it. it makes sense, but its not in your face. i get if that's annoying for people that aren't invested enough, but for me it was great

5. im conflicted, because i agree but i also think its such a serendipitous thing that this whooole weird dungeoncrawling mode with new content exists even after everything

[fat lesbian]

i preordered kingdom hearts 3 like a year ago, guess i should pay that off now.

bloodborne was fine but ive never felt any urge to beat it more than once whereas i could play the souls games however many times i wanted. just feels like it offers less variation in play style. dark souls 3 takes the best parts of both tho and that’s why it’s so fucking dope

[grue]

I WANT TO PLAY RESIDENT EVIL 2 omfg

[grue]

anywhom I've been playing thte same games I always play so not much in the way of news

I DID sign up for humble monthly so I also get to play a few fun games from that sometimes but so far nothing's been outstanding

[Zomber_Jesus]

my response, as someone who loved bloodborne a whole lot but doesn't like the other souls games:

1. i agree, i think there was a period of me having no vials at all but then eventually i got many without having to even think about it. i dont really remember having to farm

2. i have the opposite complaint- i hate the "the knight in my castle has a mean old dragon" aesthetic of what ive played in souls (i know im oversimplifying). i like that there's beasts, and then theres.... something much darker and deeper going on. i felt like there was variety, though yes thats subjective. everyones gonna be satisfied at different levels

3. thats funny, because the fights you mentioned are the ones i beat in 1 or 2 tries and so dont remember so well at all. i loved the look and feel of fighting eeeeveryone, i think. they all had their cool design (visually). as far as fight design, you may be right, but i think your points in general speak to the technical aspects of the game and its gameplay and im a gaylord for the story/aesthetic/visual design. i also didnt really have trouble with getting my health back or visceral attacks

4. i think this is one of the strongest aspects. it may seem like im being an apologist, but the game is a lovecraftian story of things untold. nobody points to a diagram and explains how the story works, that its ending, or otherwise. i think if one reads into it s'more, it makes more sense, and thats what i love about it. it makes sense, but its not in your face. i get if that's annoying for people that aren't invested enough, but for me it was great

5. im conflicted, because i agree but i also think its such a serendipitous thing that this whooole weird dungeoncrawling mode with new content exists even after everything

Lol yeah I think the whole knights and dragons thing that dark souls has to be kinda boring and childish but there are two positive consequences to it.

1. The theme of entropy and time when combined with medieval aesthetics and rituals nets a couple of neat conceptual points that enrich potential interpretations. I instinctively read Gwyn as Zeus protecting the ancient idea of aristocratic reason/gnosticism against Christian populism and mindless faith. The bits of body horror sprinkled through the game are also cool in this context as the consequence of aristotelian forms weakening and bodies losing their relation to the ousia. 

Unfortunately this doesn't work when the entire lore is taken into account because from can't get their shit together. Apart from the fire dying out out and ending the world (but actually maybe making it better who knows!) there's ancient dragons who want their revenge and whatever the hell the abyss is. Probably something that has to do with humanity although humanity is supposed to be good and prolong the fire? All of this together is the cause of the undead curse, which results in mindless non-humans, except not really because gods can go hollow to and hollows can organise states. Clusterfuck.

2. For some people (me) fighting against knights, although it often feels childish, works on a fantasy level because of the assumption that your enemy has been trained to battle it out and they know what they're doing, making the experience more rewarding. A good example of this is the lothric knights in ds3 punishing backstab fishes with their shields and trying to guard break you if you play defensively. It also adds to pvp with players not being able to help role playing as the knightly order they're a member of.

Bloodbornes enemy design makes me sad in comparison because the setting is much better then ds but instead of basing the characters on that they just made everything a puppy.

[fat lesbian]

from has their lore together just fine, they just struggled to incorporate 2 (which was never intended to be canon) into it.

[fat lesbian]

Also AOTA clears up everything re: humanity and what it is, what it does, how it works, etc. also explains the abyss. it isn’t just a random thing they threw in, it’s fully integrated into the lore. capital H Humanity is not good

[grue]

started playing Observer, unsure if I'll finish it because the game is causing me anguish

I'm still very green on the lore but the game is set on a dystopian future where people are mostly androids with implants. Society is stratified like in Brave New World and one corporation rules everything. You're an "observer" - law enforcement? unsure - a guy with particular kinds of implants that allows you to scan environment for clues and also oh, I don't know, fucking enter a dying person's brain to recall what happened to them which is the creepiest scariest shit.

Anywhom there's also this sanity mechanic bc you have to take this drug to keep you seeing things straight and if you take too long to take drugs things start getting pixelated as all hell? It's like you have a computer brain.

Story starts with you in a car, there's an inc transmission and Plot Point, suddenly the "real world" isn't real anymore and then you're at this building searching for your son (?) but the building is part building part LED shit.

Look, I don't understand. I know I turned a corner and there was this dying woman hooked to some fucking matrix pod on a bikini and there were screens with eyes everywhere so naturally the game tells you to hook up to her brain oh I didn't mention that the code to enter her apartment was given to you by the CREEPIEST "young" (?) girl and by the way, you don't talk to tenants, you talk to screens on their doors that zoom in on particular parts of their head like face or nose.

I fucking shut off the game after that. Fuuuck this shit. I'll report when I recover my balls and dive back in.

[fat lesbian]

i got graveyard keeper. very cute, im enjoying it. it’s not a straight stardew valley clone but i personally like the aspects where it differs a lot better. i like the more in depth crafting and i like how there’s no seasons to worry about so you’re not on any kind of timetable. it also feeds directly into my inner edgy goth and i can make zombies