omniscientcajun

Before Your Eyes

Big money! Loving it so far!!

Hooray! A chance!!

Hollow Knight is currently sitting just outside of my top 5 for this year. I had a similar issue with Hollow Knight that I had with Axiom Verge where my obsessiveness got in the way of better enjoying the game. Every time I got a new traversal ability, I'd try it in as many places as possible instead of going to the likely entrance to the next area. Thus I spent a lot of time traversing the world and neither game has an ideal fast travel system - Hollow Knight's is fine (and I've heard in recent patches it's gotten more robust) but when I'm frustrated and just want to be in the next area, I want a little more. Axiom Verge was a much worse offender of this issue, albeit a very personal one.

That minor gripe wouldn't be enough to knock a game I very much enjoyed down my personal ranks. The much graver issue was constant missed inputs. Supposedly the reason for my jump or attack not registering was having V-Sync turned on - which I unfortunately found out after I had completed the game. But in a game where the main hook is precision action platforming, having anything settings-wise that causes completely dropped inputs is pretty inexcusable. I liked HK's style and the charm system, but didn't care about the story much - I'm knowingly being reductive here, but it's very Souls-like/Soulsian. So I needed the controls to be perfect, always. And they weren't.

I wish I had investigated the issue earlier, that's on me. Perhaps I would have relished my time with the game more if I had. But I can't trick my mind or memory to excise those control issues I had. Even with them, in a relatively strong year, it'll still likely fight for the back end of my top 10 list. (As OC and others have been comparing it to Ori, my baseline enjoyment for Hollow Knight was a bit better, but the highs of Ori were much higher than anything I experienced in Hollow Knight.)

Hey all my Dota duders!

So, following the International, a few friends and I have decided to jump into Dota. Well, for me, it's jump back in. I was never very good, but I've played a few hundred matches from 2013-2015 and I can pick up the changes and new heroes pretty quickly. I can communicate those changes with others who are familiar with Dota and have played a little in the past/are coming from League.

The difficulty is teaching brand new players. A few tried Paragon with us when we messed around with it earlier this year and figuring out the basics and the best way to teach them has been an issue.

Does anyone have tips for teaching/helping brand new MOBA players figure out the game? I hate telling them that 'you just need to play more' when it comes to things like not overextending or pushing too hard early. Learning the basics and flow took me a while as I learned from scratch with no teacher (got into it from Daily Dota).

EDIT: To be clear: I'm, like, not very good. So I'm not trying to get them up to 4K+ MMR or anything. Just enough to get them started without feeling frustrated, like they don't know what to do, and have them bounce off the game entirely. I mean, if it's not for them, that's fine! But I don't my bad teaching to be the reason they can't get into it.

In terms of "climbing combat," which was the question posed, there's no question - Dragon's Dogma is better. It's an RPG focused on combat, perhaps above everything else. And within that combat, it incorporates mounted/climbing into really well.

Shadow of the Colossus is more akin to a puzzle platformer with action-game controls. It's "climbing combat" is relegated to managing a grip meter, climbing from safe point to safe point, and executing localized stabs. That's it. To me, there's no real debate when it comes to, as OP said, "climbing combat." If we're talking about just climbing, that's a much different conversation.

And before anyone tries to assess which game I prefer, I played SotC multiple times on PS2, again in the HD remaster, and will very likely play the PS4 remake. I put about 10 hours in DD:DA and will likely never play it again.

@hestilllives19: Thanks, lives! I'm staring at my download progress for the beta right now and with all the IGN videos today, I'm dying to jump into the fray. And thanks for all you and the other community leaders do to be inclusive and inviting to players of varying circumstances and ability to commit.

I remember joining LF NA East 2 close to launch, then moving to LF NA Central because they were active, then switching to Cerberus Wolves, all within the first few months of D1's release, though honestly kind of preferring random LFG/fireteams groups. It's not because I've had bad experiences with GB gaming groups in Destiny or other games, I don't know I've just always felt a little shy/weird about dropping in on a community that I'm largely a lurker within (as evidenced by my roughly 10ish forum posts a year).

I dropped the game shortly before Dark Below came out, and only picked it back up in August of 2015 because some friends asked me if I wanted to play with them. I did. A lot. The Taken King occupied the vast majority of my Q4 2015 gaming time, and I played fairly regularly all the way through the first 6 weeks of Age of Triumph. Pretty much the only thing I never did was go flawless - nowhere close. I got 6 wins once but seeing as I only play with my clan and I'm the only +1 K/D in it, we just play to have fun. I put nearly 1000 hours into D1 and I think I've closed the book on it. But I'm itching to tear the cover off of Destiny 2!

I'm in a smallish clan - 10-12 players with varying commitment/regularity - with some friends I've known for a long time and some friends I only met through said clan. I won't be leaving it. But I often play more than the rest of my buddies. So I joined the GB Destiny Discord and I'm available for some ol' fashioned guardian good times. It may take me a hot minute to warm up to new voices and new friends, but I'll get there. Can't wait for next week and September 6th.

I just actually made my mid(ish) point list two days ago! Here it is, with my addendum lists of 'haven't played enough' 'need to play' 'maybe play' and 'stopped playing.'

1. Horizon: Zero Dawn
2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
3. Persona 5
4. Playerunknown's Battlegrounds
5. Nier Automata
6. Dead Cells
7. Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment
8. Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire
9. MLB The Show 17
10. Mass Effect: Andromeda
11. Magikarp Jump

Not Played Enough

• Nioh
• Tumbleseed

Need to Play

• Resident Evil 7 Biohazard
• Night in the Woods
• Hollow Knight
• Everything
• What Remains of Edith Finch
• Prey
• Injustice 2

Maybe Play

• Gravity Rush 2
  • Likely Will Not Play
• Yakuza 0
  • Won't Play - Beast in the East
• For Honor
  • Likely Will Not Play
• Snake Pass
• Yooka-Laylee
• Flinthook

STOPPED

• Marvel Heroes Omega BETA
• Picross Makeout League

Not quite as many games knocked out as this time last year, but some of 2017's games have been meaty as hell - spent over 70 hours in 3 different games thus far.

I've been quiet - not that people were expecting me to chime in, not that anyone knows me or cares what I think - but the sentiment about this Remake being a "cash-grab," "lazy," "cash-in," or "creatively bankrupt" (last one is kind of a different conversation) is rubbing me the wrong way.

Building Shadow of the Colossus to feel akin to the original using a vastly updated engine/using the Last Guardian engine is quite the undertaking. None of Team Ico's games were these 5+ million unit sellers that a remake of will be a guaranteed hit. The best sales figures of SotC - which admittedly are questionable - are less than 1.5 million sold. On a platform that sold 150 hardware units. A 1% adoption rate for a game that came out 12 years ago makes for no certainty that this remake will fill Sony's pockets.

Games are inherently different than other media. The means of playing games is constantly changing and while great strides are being made to have all games accessible at all times, we're not anywhere close. Sure for movies home releases have changed multiple times over the past 25 years, but the means of printing a film to a beta tape, or a vhs tape, or a DVD, or a BluRay is kind of the same. And while there's an argument to be made that some films "NEED" to be seen in theaters - that Lawrence of Arabia needs a big screen viewing to appreciate its grandeur - having more ways to view movies is never a bad thing.

I'd rather have an attempt to earnestly bring SotC to modern consoles than see it HD-ified for the second straight console cycle. I'd rather see them make a 1-to-1 remake than have them change some content or add a bit here and there. If they're interested in doing new things, I'd love to see a full new sequel/spiritual successor. If this can make enough money/prove enough interest to give Ueda or a member of his team to make a new game, I'm all for it. And I say this as someone who was so very let down by the Last Guardian - which admittedly could never live up to my personal hype (the reveal trailer was the tipping point/last straw that made me buy a PS3... 3 not 4).

Team Ico games have never sold that well, are more critically well regarded than commercially or general public-ly, and the amount of people who are aware of them but never gave them a chance is quite high. If this is a faithful remake and gives more people the opportunity to easily play Shadow of the Colossus without having to jump through hoops or thinking 'yeah, but I wish it looked better,' I'm all for it. The original still exists. The PS3 HD update still exists. The PSNow version still exists. Can't this new engine remake exist alongside them?