[Aptorian]

Traveller, on 24 May 2019 - 10:57 PM, said:

Why does The Witness still cost £30 on the psn store? I thought it would be a bargain by now, especially as it doesn't look any more elaborate than a free app puzzle game.

I need something light after finishing Sekiro. Is Rime any good?

Or should I just give in and get Breath of the Wild?

I liked Rime. It's a relatively basic adventure and exploration game so it night suit your needs.

I'd pick Zelda over Rime any day of the week though.

[Traveller]

Lackluster Bachelorette, on 24 May 2019 - 11:03 PM, said:

When did you finish Sekiro?

I knew it would happen eventually after the Blazing Bull that my frustration would get to me and I’d wander away from playing it.

I just finished it last night. And when I say finished, I mean I completed the more complicated ending on Wednesday; then went round collecting anything I missed, and bought all important items etc. I'm leaving it there for now - NG is there when I want, with two different bosses at the end, but since they're not considered the hardest, I'm in no hurry to go through the game again right now just to get to them. Also, if any dlc appears, I'm at a good place I can access it from.

By the end, I'd got up to 15 spare skill points, as I couldn't decide which skills to get before I finished the last boss. Same with prosthetic upgrade - got all the materials for final upgrades but didn't get top tier as I finished the final boss without needing them.

(Btw I spent a week on the last boss. I just couldn't crack last two phases. Went back to it after a day or two off and finally did it without any power ups as I couldn't be bothered to farm anymore.)

Great game, but intense - I need something lighter to play now.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 25 May 2019 - 06:52 AM

[Illuyankas]

Don't pay for The Witness, the creators are completely up themselves and it has an ending so bad I regret spending any actual cash on it whatsoever

[Traveller]

Illuyankas, on 26 May 2019 - 03:48 PM, said:

Don't pay for The Witness, the creators are completely up themselves and it has an ending so bad I regret spending any actual cash on it whatsoever

I'm still amazed at the price for what looks no more complex than a puzzle game app.

Help me out here. Does anyone know of a a game where you can
- build your own base/house
- hunt, fish, gather materials to build other stuff with
- has day/night cycle, weather etc
- has land to explore, food and resources to gather
- Doesn't have, zombies/raiding parties/invaders/whatever threat is put in because that's what games need (apart from wildlife)

I'd like to build something up from scratch, collect resources etc, then farm and grow more stuff, in a relatively realistic environment. I've tried this to a certain extent with Minecraft, No Man's Sky, Stardew Valley to name a few. All have drawbacks that end up putting me off.

Minecraft is the best I guess, but it's always going to have the Minecraft look. Stardew Valley has too many human interaction elements, and the reset at night time if you're exploring is annoying. No Mans Sky is great, but I'd like to do it in game mode rather than creative, but then resources are scarce.

I guess I'd like something like Minecraft, that looks like RDR2? Don't even know if such a thing is out there.

It just seems that when I play games that have these elements in as an add on, I enjoy them more than the actual main story. I'd be quite happy in Red Dead setting up a ranch, tripping into town for supplies, hunting and fishing etc.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 26 May 2019 - 05:06 PM

[Galactic Council]

Traveller, on 24 May 2019 - 10:57 PM, said:

Why does The Witness still cost £30 on the psn store? I thought it would be a bargain by now, especially as it doesn't look any more elaborate than a free app puzzle game.

I need something light after finishing Sekiro. Is Rime any good?

Or should I just give in and get Breath of the Wild?

The Witness was literally just free with PSPlus. And it's worth every penny of that £30.

[Galactic Council]

Traveller, on 26 May 2019 - 05:04 PM, said:

Illuyankas, on 26 May 2019 - 03:48 PM, said:

Don't pay for The Witness, the creators are completely up themselves and it has an ending so bad I regret spending any actual cash on it whatsoever

I'm still amazed at the price for what looks no more complex than a puzzle game app.

You don't know what you're talking about. You make it sound as if that's something anyone could punch out in a few hours, it really is not. The game is certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but I personally think it is genius - the base mechanics are incredibly simple, but the game itself grows bewilderingly complex. It was addictive, compelling, gorgeous, and made me feel like a right clever clogs at times (and also a total dumbo at others). It teaches you everything you need to know without ever saying or writing down anything, which in itself is some accomplishment.

As for the above comment about the ending...fuck me, if you played The Witness just to see an ending scene, then why did you play it at all?

[Illuyankas]

The puzzles are good, absolutely. The graphics are great and it's extremely rewarding to complete them and activate those bloody lasers.

The little witty philosophical quotes and especially the bonus videos from the bastard hard puzzles (I had to google the ship one which is not friendly to the partially deaf) are all disconnected and isolated from each other; if they were in place to reinforce and supplement a theme from the makers that would be expanded upon while going through each individual area, providing a narrative through environmental storytelling inferred through your own reaction to the world they wouldn't feel out of place or trite.

That's my biggest problem with The Witness, really. It doesn't mean anything. All the areas are just places with no connection beyond the physical, just slices of locations jammed together with some puzzles attached. The philosophy and quotes trick you into thinking you're being told a story, but you're just being fed a Wikiquote of the Day while you move from one set of scenery to the next.

Then there's the ending itself, once you've accessed the mountain and reached the innermost secrets which turn out to be absolutely nothing! The end! No moral! You walk into an elevator and fly around the island while all the puzzles you completed reset themselves, before being dropped off at the start of the game to do all the puzzles again and also a bonus hard mode dungeon.

It's landscapes with puzzles in that lies to you that it has meaning, it does not. You witness nothing that matters. The creators could have spent the time they took in pretending their game wasn't just puzzles in extracting their heads from their asses and making more puzzles; instead we have the results of 10% googling smart quotes famous people and 90% jacking off to their own cleverness.

Make a puzzle game if you want, just don't tell people there's more to it than that if you can't be bothered to add it in.

[Traveller]

Galactic Council, on 27 May 2019 - 12:29 PM, said:

Traveller, on 26 May 2019 - 05:04 PM, said:

Illuyankas, on 26 May 2019 - 03:48 PM, said:

Don't pay for The Witness, the creators are completely up themselves and it has an ending so bad I regret spending any actual cash on it whatsoever

I'm still amazed at the price for what looks no more complex than a puzzle game app.

You don't know what you're talking about. You make it sound as if that's something anyone could punch out.

Well no, I don't know, that's why I ask here. All I've seen is the trailer on ps store where you can buy it. The trailer makes it look like a series of line connecting maze puzzles, that all set off lasers once solved. My kids play a lot of free apps which are basically a series of increasingly difficult geometric puzzles, that for the most part look quite a lot better presented than the ones in the Witness trailer. I'm not saying there's not more to it, just that if there is it doesn't get conveyed well.

[Aptorian]

You're both right... Who ever is hiding behind the Galactic account.

The puzzles in The Witness are actually relatively simple. It's all line puzzles and perspective manipulation. What makes the game worth the price is the level of game design that goes into presenting, evolving and tying together the logic of the puzzles.

I was too stupid to make it more than three zones into the game without a guide but it was really good.

[Galactic Council]

Aptorian, on 27 May 2019 - 04:19 PM, said:

You're both right... Who ever is hiding behind the Galactic account.

The puzzles in The Witness are actually relatively simple. It's all line puzzles and perspective manipulation. What makes the game worth the price is the level of game design that goes into presenting, evolving and tying together the logic of the puzzles.

I was too stupid to make it more than three zones into the game without a guide but it was really good.

It's me, Khell Khelly Khellerson!

And Trav, I agree that trailers do not really convey the 'feel' of the game when being played. I guess it's just something you have to try to know if you'll enjoy it, and I can see why you might hesitate to shell out full price for something you're not convinced that you'll engage with. For me, it was definitely worth the full price of entry (I bought it a few days after it was released), but you might want to read/watch a few reviews before deciding. It will no doubt be on sale again at some point.

[Galactic Council]

Illuyankas, on 27 May 2019 - 03:29 PM, said:

Then there's the ending itself, once you've accessed the mountain and reached the innermost secrets which turn out to be absolutely nothing! The end! No moral! You walk into an elevator and fly around the island while all the puzzles you completed reset themselves, before being dropped off at the start of the game to do all the puzzles again and also a bonus hard mode dungeon.

Well, there's a reason why it drops you back off at the start, and about two minutes from there you can unlock a 'true' ending scene (you might already know this and I misunderstood. In any case, this ending isn't all that either. It was the experience of playing and puzzling which I fell in love with).

[Werthead]

Traveller, on 26 May 2019 - 05:04 PM, said:

Help me out here. Does anyone know of a a game where you can
- build your own base/house
- hunt, fish, gather materials to build other stuff with
- has day/night cycle, weather etc
- has land to explore, food and resources to gather
- Doesn't have, zombies/raiding parties/invaders/whatever threat is put in because that's what games need (apart from wildlife)

I'd like to build something up from scratch, collect resources etc, then farm and grow more stuff, in a relatively realistic environment. I've tried this to a certain extent with Minecraft, No Man's Sky, Stardew Valley to name a few. All have drawbacks that end up putting me off

Have you tried Subnautica?

[Traveller]

Werthead, on 28 May 2019 - 10:49 AM, said:

Traveller, on 26 May 2019 - 05:04 PM, said:

Help me out here. Does anyone know of a a game where you can
- build your own base/house
- hunt, fish, gather materials to build other stuff with
- has day/night cycle, weather etc
- has land to explore, food and resources to gather
- Doesn't have, zombies/raiding parties/invaders/whatever threat is put in because that's what games need (apart from wildlife)

I'd like to build something up from scratch, collect resources etc, then farm and grow more stuff, in a relatively realistic environment. I've tried this to a certain extent with Minecraft, No Man's Sky, Stardew Valley to name a few. All have drawbacks that end up putting me off

Have you tried Subnautica?

No.. how is it? Looks very much like Abyss update on No Man's Sky.

[Mentalist]

W00t, Spyro re-ignited trilo getting a PC port after all. Good things come to those who wait eventually.

Might actually check out what the fuss was all about.

[Aptorian]

I might recommend my time at portia but if you don't like Stardwew you probably wont like portia either, though it's a bigger game.

[Werthead]

Traveller, on 28 May 2019 - 03:37 PM, said:

No.. how is it? Looks very much like Abyss update on No Man's Sky.

It's not really like that. There's no procedural generation, so the whole game is hand-crafted and designed, and you don't have a whole world to explore, just one region of a planet's ocean (although it's still massive, it's not effectively infinite).

You're the survivor of a starship crash and you have to try to escape from a water planet when all you have is an escape pod (and, er, a matter replicator, which is handy). There's a crafting loop in the game where you're getting materials to build stuff to allow you to travel faster and then deeper, which opens up news areas. That also allows you to access more wreckage from the ship, which in turn triggers the next part of the story.

Subnautica is unusual in that it combines the standard survival stuff with a reasonably strong narrative drive. You can ignore that if you really want to just build tons of sea bases, submarines and other things and trick them out, or otherwise you can just focus on the story and finish the game off in about 20 hours. As someone who is not keen on survival games normally, I really enjoyed it.

[Mentalist]

WOO-HOOO, MALKAVIANS ARE A STARTER CLAN IN BLOODLINES 2!

Best news to wake up to.

[Malankazooie]

Coming this November.

Uh, so, you're like, the 'Amazon Prime' of the destroyed world and you're tasked with getting communities connected again? Ummmm, and, uh, like, 'Death Stranding' is, uh, like, uh, a real thing because you can enter into the realm of death, and uh, erm, like, you don't want to be stranded there? or something? Ah fuck, I dunno, I'm still confused by it all, but I'm interested, for sure. This has Hideo Kojima's bizarre vibe all over it.



[EDIT] Maybe this helps? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
spoiler tagged for size

Spoiler

This post has been edited by Malankazooie: 29 May 2019 - 05:48 PM

[Mentalist]

Eh, that sounds suspiciously like asynchronous multiplayer.

Anything multiplayer is a "not interested" in my book.

[Malankazooie]

Strong multiplayer vibe for sure. I'd like to see some actual game play and someone talking about its features.