Shagger

Welcome to VGR.

Fear is biological. It's an instinct. Expose a bacterium to a toxic substance and it will flee, that's how basic fear is. Fear only became complex because the human animal became complex. The cause may be simple and the complex and dangerous relationship humans have with fear is vital, but also very open to interpretation. Tapping into so something powerful, but also unrecognisable without understanding the primal element of fear you are trying to provoke is dangerous, but that's part of the appeal. The original Resident Evil games prompted terror by limiting your ability to defend yourself. The way the game controlled directly affected the horror element. Gamers these days, they want the full package. Deliberately restricting the controls as a method to install fear and panic in the player is no longer an valid reason for that type of control, even if it should be. But in my opinion, it shouldn't be. We can have horror games now that can put you into that sense of panic and fear, but still control well because the technology has improved. I understand how the old School Resident Evil games were designed to control. How that limited scheme and options in combat with delays in control were designed to induce panic, I understand that, I truly do, but if those same developers were able to access the same tools we have today, would they do the same thing? Honestly, I'd say not. Tech' these days opens the possibility to create games that are just as scary as they were back then with a more connected feeling in how they control. I think Capcom get that. They want to replicate that same feeling, but in a game that controls like a game developed in the 21st century. Is that really so wrong?

It's not like I'm upset over the prospect of a remake of Red Dead Redemption, far from it, but I still don't understand why Rockstar are so keen to bury Red Dead Revolver. What is it about that game that make Rockstar treat it like the child they lock in attic whenever they have guests round for dinner? Just pretending it doesn't exist. What is it about that game that makes them so ashamed of it?

Can't be arsed.

I saw this and just had to share it 🤣...

Most of those items aren't that hard to mis. A gamers natural instincts to loot and explore should help you catch most of those. It's when there's some cryptic bullshit afoot like in the original version of FFXII, that it becomes a real problem.

I'll go down the list and pick some of the more interesting ones. Demon Souls You probably know already, but I despise that game. It's a soulsborne, enough said, moving on Darksiders A decent, if maybe slightly dated open world action adventure. It controls well and has and interesting story concept. Worth a play. Devil May Cry The original started development as a Resident Evil game for the PS2, but Capcom soon realized that whilst the loved how the game was progressing, it was moving a bit far from Resident Evil to be a part of that series, so decided to finish the game and release it as a new IP. And what we ended up with is the best hack n' slash franchise ever. The games are all about slaying demons and making look good. Avoid Devil May cry 2 at all costs, it's awful, and Ninja Theory's reboot DMC rom 2013 is... controversial, but it's a great series and a must play. Dishonoured I feel this game is more fun in concept than it is to actually play. It's a dark, mysterious game whare your choices affect the environment and the lives of those living there... in theory. When I played it, I tried to avoid killing as much as possible, but still ended up with the city in a state like I had hacked everybody to death. Worth a go if you find it cheap, I'd say. Dragon Age Inquisition Deluxe Edition Think Game of Thrones as a video game and you're not far off. A mature and expansive RPG with team based combat and strategy elements with a story big on politics, social commentary and personal relationships. A very good game that's that doesn't really need the player to know anything about the other Dragon Age games to enjoy, but it's complex and and heavy it's delivery in both story and gameplay and needs serious commitment from the player to best out of it. Dragons Dogma The first thing I need to say is DO NOT play the original, make sure you pick up the Dark Arisen version. Dark arisen includes more content and fixed some of the original's major flaws. Now that's out the way, let's get into the game. The servers have long since gone down, but the game did have a unique online component. There are characters in this universe called pawns that live in service to the players own character, the Arisen. You party is made up of yourself and up to three pawns. In game, you actually create your own main pawn, much like a main character and your friends would be able to add that pawn to thier own battle parties. You can still play the game offline and use pawns the game provides, and that's really the only way to play it now. The character creator is superb. You can adjust the gender, body type, hight, weight, just about anything and it would affect the gameplay. For example, larger charters were tougher and could carry more stuff, but smaller characters were far nimbler, use less stamina and keep thier grip whilst climbing enemies for longer. Speaking of enemies, and this is a brave thing to say, Dragons Dogma has the best combat of any western style RPG. Think Skyrim meets Shadow of the Colossus, and you get the idea. The controls was fluent and weighty, the enemy verity is huge and was very tactical. Like I mentioned, you could climb onto larger enemies to hit waekspots and your pawns would do thing like empower you weapons with elemental spells and hold enemies down so you could strike them. It was fantastic. But man, does this game have problems. The pawns, whilst helpful in combat, never shut up and can get really annoying. The auto-save is unreliable, a problem confounded by the fact you're only allowed one save to begin with. I understand whey that was necessary given how the game's online component worked, but now it's irritating. Fast travel also has a cost in that you need a certain item to fast travel each time and another item to place a points at your choosing to mark a fast travel point. That's fine, but the problem was those things you needed were so rare that fast travel was precious ever use. No kidding, on my first 50+ hour playthrough, I gained the resources to travel to just three location and only actually fast travel twice Also, the story starts off strong, but in the end isn't that interesting. Travelling itself was also pretty tedious because the same ermines at the same level in the same numbers and even identical character models always spanned in exactly the same locations. Yes, the best combat in any western style RPG, and they made it tedious and repetitive. That also makes the game punishingly hard at the start to then become ridiculously easy towards the end because the enemies don't level up and the placements of enemies at a verity of levels seems quite random at times. Like I said, some of these issues, like the fast travel and some of the difficulty balance issues, get fixed in the Dark Arisen version. I can't understate how good the combat is in this game, I really can't, and the character creator is fantastic, but you'll have to decide if you are willing to put up with it's frustrations to enjoy what it has to offer. Dragons Dogma 2 has also been announced, so it might be a better ide to wait for that game instead, but look into Dragons Dogma and decide if it's for you. FFX/X2 You are not permitted to read on until you've bought this game. Heavenly Sword Have you bought FFX/X2 yet? You better have... Anyway, Heavenly Sword is a criminally underrated PS3 exclusive from our old friends Ninja Theory. Very similar is gameplay to Devil May cry with a cracking story and great looks for it's time. Kingdom Of Amalur: Reckoning/ Re Reckoning I said Dragons Dogma had the best combat of any western Style RPG, and I stand buy that, but this isn't far off. A massive, and I do mean massive game with a unique setting and style. I actually reviewed the "remaster" right here o VGR and go into more detail the gameplay there if you want to check it out, but it's a very system that allows the player to use any weapon in the game regardless of class and actually change you class build complexly whenever you want. It's a pity that Kingdom Of Amalur: Re Reckoning released in such a poor state on PC and the console version I played about a year later had problems as well. Again, check the review thread for more details on that. What really sucks is that you can't by the original on any digital platform now because the game changed publisher between Reckoning and Re-Reckoning (The original was published by EA, but the remaster was THQ Nordic). Hopefully, the remaster had had more patching since I last tried it because it's exclusive DLC, Fatesworn, is actually really good (when it works...cough). Remember Me An interesting game from French developer Dontnod. Yes, that's right, Dontnod, as in... And this Remember Me is is exactly the same, expect for just about every single detail about it. Remember Me is a 3rd person action/adventure game set in a future version of Paris with mele combat and platforming puzzles. The story is cool, a kind of anti-establishment government-control-the-population sort of thing, but the game is a little hard to play because the controls demand some insanely long and hard to pull off button combos. A quirky and memorable game, but it takes some getting used to. Two Worlds One of those RPGs that tried to beat Oblivion and failed. It was so bad, the developers apologised for it. Not because of a bad launch or for bugs or any the common things we see now, just because it was bad. The sequel is a lot better, but it's still not great. Bloodborne Another soulsborne, moving on... Code Vain ANOTHER soulsborne, expect this one has anime vampires... moving on... Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age I had a love-hate relationship with the original FFXII. This game has the best story of any Final Fantasy I have played. Yes, its better than Final Fantasy VII; Sorry, not sorry, it just is! It's more mature with more complex, yet relatable characters and a better plot. The setting of FFVII I'll admit is cool and works brilliantly as a social/political mirror and that helped give it impact, but that game's story needed that to lean on whilst FFXII's story stands on it's own in a more fantastical world, so nuh. I also loved the combat. A drastic change from the formula, yes, with its open world real time mechanic, but was still very much a Final Fantasy game with the strategic elements. I also love the gambit system, it was fun and made you feel like you were programmer working the the party's AI and was more involved than any system we've seen from Final Fantasy before or since in my opinion. However, the game was almost ruined by the levelling system. People have complained endlessly about how FFXIII's levelling system was too restrictive, and they're right, it was, but I believe they were overcompensating for the FFXII's system, which I think is even worse. It so open and poorly tutorialed that it's that messing it up was a near certainty for a new player. Experienced players would find, like I did, that the fully open licence boards and the endless choice it offered meant absolutely nothing as the only way to level your party efficiently was to make all the characters pretty much exactly the same as each other, it was boring. The game was also insanely cryptic when it came to earning the best weapons. For example, to obtain the Zodiac Spear you had to NOT chests in one of the earliest parts of the game. I mean, that's not fair! Thankfully, The Zodiac age fixes this. Each character choose two licence boards representing 12 different classes each with thier own weapons, armour, abilities, buffs and perks to obtain, so you can plan out what characters get what boards in a strategic manner and pair the right classes with each other. For example, you might decide to make a character a warrior and a black mage so that character gets buffs for both disciplines and attack at range as well as close up. The top weapons are still a little cryptic, but not nearly to the same level. Persistence will often allow you to obtain them rather than having to absolutely know exactly what to do beforehand. So with The Zodiac Age version, FFXII is near flawless. A must play. And I think that's enough for now. I'll maybe come back to talk about some more of these games later. Hope that was helpful.

This is ridiculous. Nobody is going to mistake a drink for a video game.

The new one from Electric Callboy

I watch Caddicarrus for entertainment, whilst I tend to watch ReviewTechUSA and occasionally BigFry for gaming news. ACG, IGN and AngryJoe are my main go to's for reviews.

You know what, I can't even formulate a thought about this, just watch... Suffice to say, this trailer makes me feel drunk.

I can see what they're doing, they probably feel that the adoring fan has become been endearing through nostalgia, and for some people that may be true, but for me he was annoying then and he's annoying now.

I started posting on there frequently just recently and I'd have to agree with what you've said. Too many bots and whilst these users do get banned fairly efficiently (almost too efficiently, to the point whare I wonder why that particular account was banned as the posts on it were harmless), thier posts never get removed. It's badly moderated as well to be frank. Reported another member on thier several days ago because they just snapped me for some reason despite barley even knowing this person and I've heard nothing. Even if the mods decided to take no action, that's fine, but people who know my style of moderation know that I keep people informed and give them feedback. It's important that believe thier concerns are at least being heeded, especially if the mods don't agree. The thing that really bothers me is that members, including staffers, use posts as a front to peddle things and for SSP and that is literally thier only reason for being there. I'm not going to name names or link to it, but one individual, a member of JoyFreak's editorial team no less, posts articles to peddle things that would be considered "controversial" at the very least here on VGR. For example, he posted an article examining the pros and cons between Steam and EGS which is fair enough but further down the page he hyperlinks to a site whare you can buy accounts. Just in case you weren't aware, doing this sort of thing breaks the TOS of both these platforms and could get that account banned. He also peddles online casinos, NFT's, cryptocurrency, you name it. All in the form of hyperlinks hidden in his articles, so even though it's shameless he isn't exactly being up front about it. To be fair, some of these articles make a decent read, but how is anyone supposed to take is seriously when he's only posted it to peddle a bitcoin casino or some other bollocks? There are some good folk over there, but a few things I would consider strange in how the forum is run put me off and it has an effect. No exaggeration, at least 80% of the posts are either SSP, bots or the aforementioned articles. Most of what's left are posts on the junk threads like "what are you listening to" or a thread to post random YouTube stuff. Now, it's not all negative. it's great looking forum with a nice, clean interface and a good variety of in-built features that are fun to use. And like I said, there are some good discussions and people to be found on there. The place also seems accepting and neutral when it comes to social politics, even if some of the members aren't. Overall, it's not a bad forum, but I'm ready to believe it's seen better days.

I for one do find myself getting more exited, but still intend to keep my expectations in check and this game at arm's length given Bethesda's track record. I'm impressed by the sheer scale of this whole thing and admire it's ambition. A couple of induvial points I wanted to bring up that stood out to me. It looks like they're stepping away from the "unique" weapons thing that we've seen done a lot in Fallout and TES and instead just giving you a large verity of weapons that you can customise them to suit you needs in specific situation and to suit play style and skills, and to me that's a good move. The companion system looks very similar to what we saw in Fallout 4, just expanded and integrated into the ship and it's mechanics in a way that reminds me of the Lieutenant's mechanic from AC Odyssey and I'm fine with that. I too love the customisation. It seams like you can change both the function and appearance of your ship by how to customise it. That's going to be a lot of fun to play around with. Because somebody will, if you purposefully make your ship look like a great big flying cock, just know that you're a lot like your own penis. Not big and even less clever. Looks like they've learned some valuable lessons from Fallout 4 when it comes to the outpost building mechanics and that's good because that feature was horrid in Fallout 4, especially for console players. So again, nice work. But of course, the biggest concern with any Bethesda game, will it... you know... work? They didn't even address this in this showcase, they are not even claiming this game will work OK. Considering that while showcasing Fallout 76 Tod Howard infamously said to the world "It just works" makes me wonder. The systems in place look mostly like the kinds of things Bethesda has used a lot in the past with a few things thrown in like the space combat, but thankfully that and the other new things don't look overly complicated. Having said that, they do seam to be using these systems on a scale way beyond what even Bethesda have done before. So given thier track record, not to mention the fact Bethesda's Creation Engine is looking very much like Mr House; I'm choosing to remain less than optimistic. In my opinion for a AAA, next gen game in 2023 this is not exactly the best looking game in the world either, especially considering what we've been seeing with Unreal Engine 5 recently. But like I said, this is Bethesda, so perhaps pegging back the graphics a bit would be for the best. One thing I'm really not sure about is how this procedural generation thing will work with the hand designed environments with another system to add locations like enemy outposts and... to be honest, that just sounds like something to go wrong. If this does work as advertised, this could be game of the decade potential, so come on Bethesda and please don't fuck this up.

I am going to have to move this to General Chat. I see you've been through a lot, but I'm glad things seem to be coming togethe. It's great to have you back.

I'm not sure if this counts as a genre, but I do avoid the "Soulsborne" type games as much as possible. The closest thing I've played to such a game that I've actually liked is Jedi: Fallen Order. I've long since accepted that, despite loving RPG's and 3rd person action/adventure games, the "Soulborne" just aren't made for me. I hate thier gameplay tropes, like no pausing (And that really is ridiculous in a single play game) and the sluggish combat. I hate the way they look, it the same dreary, demon underworld cliché every time. But most of all, I hate the trial and error philosophy behind the so-called "challenge". There're not hard games, merely cryptic ones loaded with beginners traps and cheap enemy AI that prays on one's natural instincts as a gamer rather than combat your techniques and strategies in a natural way.

I've enjoyed what I've played of the series, but wouldn't consider myself a hardcore fan. AC 4 Black Flag is one on my favourite games and I've enjoyed Odessey a lot as well. Some games I avoided because of bad reviews or was too into other games in that moment to really care.

She fought hard, but in the end we knew if was only a matter of time. My partners mother passed away last night. On behalf of the family, I want to thank you for your thoughts and condolences.

She's in a hotel and is seeing her mother in the morning as far as I know. I'll be sure to pass on your condolences.

Not been the best of days. My better half's mother was admitted to hospital earlier, and it's not good. She's got very little time left. My partner got on a train to to try and get there before she looses her chance to say goodbye. Suffice to say, she's pretty devastated.

Final Fantasy XVI is the big one for me, but if there is one thing to learn from AAA gaming over the last few years it is pre-order nothing as they're a good chance a game will come out busted. Well, I guess I'll be doing that anyway since I don't have a PS5 yet.

With all due respect to people who like that game, they don't know any better. They don't know what an arcade racer and a proper Burnout game is supposed to feel like. I (and others) have spoken about this great franchise and that travesty Burnout Paradise before on these boards. Check out this thread for example.

I'm still wondering what the hell happened to Deep Down. Capcom have a habit of hyping up games, especially new IP's, with awesome trailers and details about how awesome it'll be then we just never hear about them again. I found this video on the subject with what is the latest from a few weeks ago:

The Super Famicom is the Japanese SNES. Unless you were living in Japan in the early 90's I doupt you saw any commercials for it.

I replied to the topic, but didn't even talk about what games I've been playing! silly me. Still playing Red alert 2 a lot, but have recently started experimenting with map creation. I played and reviewed Ravenlok through Gamepass recently. A beaautiful game, but with some serious problem with difficulty and combat. Check out the review here if you so wish. Other games I've been playing include World of Warships, Atomic Heart, A Plague Tail: Requiem (Reviewed that one as well, it's superb), Horizon: Forbitten West and Hogwarts Legacy to name a few.