Video Games Thread

[harv]

Haven't played it yet because I'm waiting for Sega to port the 360 version to the Wii U's eShop as a budget digitally distributable only title. Sega would be insane not to do it, it would cost bugger all to do and be an easy profit for them to make. If they don't do it before the second one launches then someone at Sega needs to be sacked.

And whether you liked it or not is immaterial - the Nerd-Rage was hilarious lol

[AVFCRoss]

Well, finally Platinum'd Skyrim...OK game, nothing special, imo, though...Don't get how it won GOTY awards since theres nothing really groundbreaking about it

It's cool witnessing your first few dragon fights, but then it just becomes an inconvience on your way between quest markers and you end up getting bored of it...Especially when you find out the dragons have the same fight patterns constantly...Fly around, land, turn around on the spot, fly away, repeat until you kill it with repeated shots to its kneecaps....Yawn.

Dungeons are boring too...Same layout every single time, same stupid animal puzzles, same loot and rewards, same enemies to fight...they're just copy and paste jobs...I didn't even find the side faction quests interesting either, the Dark Brotherhood questline was easily the best thing about Oblivion and yet Skyrims doesntt have a patch on it, you could argue they made the quests worse.

Scale of the world is impressive, but the graphics are pretty average and theres so many glitches, despite the numerous patches released for the game...Thank God it isnt a difficult game, just time consuming.

[jman]

OK game, nothing special

Don't get how it won GOTY awards since theres nothing really groundbreaking about it

boring too

Same layout every single time

they're just copy and paste jobs..

the graphics are pretty average and theres so many glitches, despite the numerous patches released for the game

If I didn't know any better.. I thought you were describing every single Call of Duty game released since MW1... oh no.. I forgot.. you like those games 

[AVFCRoss]

I do like Call of Duty, and in the very same way, I wouldn't give it GOTY awards anymore.

I did like Skyrim, but it never blew me away at any point, nor did I feel like exploding with excitement over the Dragon set pieces/quests.

Everything you didn't quote, that I went into detail about, regarding the game is true....Dragon battles lose their novelty after the first few fights because of the mundane and samey patterns Dragons attack in, and the games various dungeons are just recycled way too much.

It's all well and good having scale and size, but the amount of glitches isn't really worth it in the end...and God knows how many patches this game has had down the years as attempts to fix them, and yet you still can't pickpocket someone properly because your characters body clips through a wall and someone on the otherside detects you as a result. Things that like, you have to laugh at, because you'll only cry otherwise 

[Late]

I can understand people not being keen on any given game - everyone has different tastes - but I don't really understand getting all the achievements or trophies for a game you don't like.
I'll usually get more achievements on a game I like than one I don't, but I very rarely get the full 1000 on any game even if I love it.

Is it a sort of OCD thing? If so I certainly get that, and am guilty of ridiculous things like that on occasion, but it doesn't extend to achievement hunting for me - I've got 49 out of 50 achievements on a game before and walked away despite the remaining one being to play a level in local coop, which I could easily do.


I've been playing it for a few days now, and I'm undecided about Final Fantasy XIII-2. The story seems okay once you get to grips with what happened in the previous game, the characters are well constructed and likeable (though the moogle saying "Kupo" at the end of every sentence is nearly as irritating as Lymle saying "'kay" at the end of every sentence in Star Ocean TLH). But I'm not a fan of the Active Time Battle - which pretty much requires you to spam the A button (usually "auto-fight" or "auto-heal" depending on your character's class) and all of your tactical decisions being in switching classes from time to time - i.e. switch to a defensive class just before you get hit, switch to a medic when you're low on health, switch to attacker when you want to cause some damage.
I much preferred the old turn-based combat, where the key is choosing what spell or action each individual character performs.
Still, I'll stick with it. And not just because I'm running short of games

[AVFCRoss]

Where did I say I disliked it Late?

[Late]

You didn't sound very keen, but you didn't say you didn't like it.

It's a phenomenon I've seen before, not just with you (and Kieron to a degree) - people playing games just for trophies and achievements. If I'm playing a game and I find 90% of the hidden items on my playthrough it's unlikely I'll replay it so I can get the other ones. I'll do so if it's a great game I was going to replay anyway, but just to get some gamerscore? Nope. I've even seen people buy games they know they won't like, just because it's easy to get all the achievements. It's madness.

Screw that. Play a game you enjoy until you get to the point where you've done everything you want to and you want to play something else - don't play to fulfil some random bloke's criteria for having fully experienced the game.

[jman]

So with that last sentence - are you saying you think achievements/trophies are pointless in their entirety - if so, I couldn't disagree more.

Whilst I can (in some way) understand why Ross goes out of his way to get 100% in the games he plays (as I have done so myself in a few games) there's no way I'd do it in a game I didn't particularly enjoy playing.  Usually I will only 100% a game if it meets certain criteria.. some of it being :

1) It doesn't have online achievements
2) It doesn't require massive amounts of play-time after you have finished the game
3) It is enjoyable to play.

If you take Tomb Raider for instance.. which I loved.. I got pretty much most of the single player achievements which required some post completion game-time.  However I was not enjoying it as much as I had to grind some of the achievements I had missed...  in the end the SP achievements I didn't get were buggy or required too much grinding and I really needed to do a new playthrough.. something I wasn't prepared to do.  I also didn't even bother going online once.  It was exactly the same scenario I faced with Dirt:Showdown too.

Even if a game did have entirely single player achievements and I enjoyed playing it - there's no guarantee that I would 100% it.. Bioshock Infinite for instance.. I did get a lot on my first playthrough.. but 1 or 2 of the achievements required doing a lot of extra leg-work to find hidden stuff etc.. stuff I would of had to use a guide for.. I just couldn't be arsed to be honest.

But there have been cases where I have enjoyed a game more because of the achievements.. Dead Rising springs to mind straight away.. saving every single survivor was an absolute bitch.. the guide I was using was crap because I did it not too long after the game release, so I found myself ad-libbing a lot of it... but because your constantly against the clock it was fucking hard and I did it with seconds to spare.. however it was an epic playthrough and I really enjoyed doing it... I would of never of attempted to do it without the achievement there though and I guess that's the point!

Whilst I am proud of that achievement.. I am equally ashamed I went and did the Zombie Genocider one (killing over 53,000 zombies in one playthrough).. I was planning to do the full 100% after I did the 50 survivor one.. but got totally side-tracked by Gears of War and the fact my xbox went RROD.. when I did finally go back to it (4 years later).. I did the Zombie Genocider achievement and thought - fuck this to the other achievements lol.  I've since sold the game, so definitely no going back now.

[Late]

So with that last sentence - are you saying you think achievements/trophies are pointless in their entirety - if so, I couldn't disagree more.

Largely.
But not completely.

There are some games where I've gotten more out of the game because it's got achievements than I would have gotten if it didn't have achievements. I usually don't look at the achievements for a game until after I've completed it, and even then I sometimes don't bother.
But sometimes I'll get to the end, see that I got an achievement for saving person A, and there's a separate achievement there for saving person B instead - when I never realised there was actually a choice between them. Then I might replay the game (or that level) to see what's different. Or I'll see there's an achievement for completing the game with zero kills - and if I enjoyed the game on the first playthrough the knowledge of that achievement may well incite me to play again and try for zero kills. There's a strong possibility I might've replayed it anyway, though, if I enjoyed it. And if I didn't enjoy it then I ain't replaying it irrespective of whether there's achievements to get.

But I find the vast majority of achievements pretty pointless. Collect all the hidden objects? No thanks. Complete 10 races online? Not interested. Complete the game on easy, after you've already completed it on hard? They can shove that achievement so far up their arse they choke on it.

I mentioned the Lego one earlier, where I got something like 970 or 980 out of 1000, and the only remaining achievement was to play a level co-op. Easily done. Can't be arsed. I'll may well find and purchase every single character in the game (and get an achievement for that) but not because there's gamerscore for doing so. I'd do that because I want to do that. I want to find every character. I'd do it if the game didn't have achievements. Play a level in co-op? I'd do that if someone wanted to play co-op (and have done it in most lego games) but didn't in that one because there was nobody around that wanted to play, at the time. Achievements made zero difference to me in that game.

Another good example is "State of Decay". I've only had one play-through on that so far - though I do intend going back to it at some point - and I got most of the achievements. I didn't get the achievement for completing the "Judge" storyline. And I didn't get the achievement for getting killed by zombies.
When I next play through the game I'll definitely want to complete the Judge one. Not because I'll get an achievement for it, but because I want to know how that story pans out. I consider letting that settlement get overrun to be my biggest failing in the game, and I'd want to save them next time (hopefully whilst also saving all the others, but if I have to sacrifice one that I saved first time around then so be it).
Do I want the achievement for getting killed by zombies, though? Not at all! I'd imagine it's one of the easiest achievements in a game ever - get killed by zombies in a zombie sandbox game where you're surrounded by hoards of the buggers. But I'm not going to deliberately fail (and getting that achievement means you've failed!) just so I can get an achievement. I might get it accidentally - but I'll be sorely disappointed in myself if I do.

So yeah - I'd say achievements are pretty pointless. On rare occasions they'll point me toward doing something in the game that I might not have thought of (but often I'd think of it or hear/read about it anyway), but the vast majority of the time I think they add nothing.



I still like it when the notification pops up saying I've achieved something, mind. We all like a bit of congratulation from time to time!

[AVFCRoss]

You didn't sound very keen, but you didn't say you didn't like it.

It's a phenomenon I've seen before, not just with you (and Kieron to a degree) - people playing games just for trophies and achievements. If I'm playing a game and I find 90% of the hidden items on my playthrough it's unlikely I'll replay it so I can get the other ones. I'll do so if it's a great game I was going to replay anyway, but just to get some gamerscore? Nope. I've even seen people buy games they know they won't like, just because it's easy to get all the achievements. It's madness.

Screw that. Play a game you enjoy until you get to the point where you've done everything you want to and you want to play something else - don't play to fulfil some random bloke's criteria for having fully experienced the game.

There's a difference between not being too keen on a game, and totally disliking it...Is it one of my favourite games of all time? No. Is it a game I'd go back to time and time again? No. Was it simply an OK open world game with mostly average elements with a odd smattering of genuine quality/interest? Yes.

My judgement when it comes to games is actually very good...I base that off the fact that I can't even remember the last time I bought a game that I actually hated to the point where I flung it aside and never touched it again...Granted, I've played alot of average games that dissapointed my expectations of them, but that's not necessarily a bad thing...I completed Skyrim to Platinum in 150 hours in a span of almost 2 years...It's a game that I found good to play in small portions, and the best thing about the Platinum is that you don't have to do any senseless grinding for it and just by beating everything the game has to offer, which you would have done anyway, can grab you every trophy in the game.

Levelling grinds are a different matter, though it does depend on a number of things. I reached level on Red Dead Redemption, but me and my mates always used to posse up and either fuck around in free roam having shit loads or laughs or team up and kick some arse online...It was incredibly fun and made me want to reach level 50 for the trophy.

Take a look at my breakdown;

http://psnprofiles.com/SimplySupreme

There's a ton of games there that are nowhere near to fully completed. I haven't gone off these game or anything, I'm just playing other things at the moment, but I wouldn't start rocking uncontronably in the corner of my room to the point of needing medicine if i never completed them, I just like to use trophies as a good measurement of what you get out of a game.

There's a massive difference between a trophy whore and a trophy hunter...Trophy whores will play absolutely anything to get trophies, mostly easy, quick or cheap games, and they avoid lengthy Platinums like the plague...They'll also avoid games they would have usually bought, but don't want them to tarnish their completion percentage because they might be too hard or require too much time to beat.

Trophy hunters just go that extra mile to beat a game beyond standard completion, they don't give a flying fuck about how hard or long the time might be, they just enjoy the game for what it is and try and embrace the extra challenge.

I don't class myself as either of those...I buy games I have a genuine interest in and don't even bother studying the trophy list in any great detail, not do I care how long beating the game would take...10,000 kills on Resistance 2...I ended up getting on 14,000 on that game...500 games on FIFA 12...God knows how many I ended up actually playing...Rank 10 on GTA 4...Legend Rank 5 on Motorstorm, list goes on.

If you enjoy a game enough, trophies don't even become an issue...It's when you hate the game that starts become a problem, and I never have that issue...I love the games I play and the Platinum trophy gives me a convienient excuse to indulge in them further.

[chelseachelsea]

You need to get a life and a job if you spent 150 hours completing a game.

[AVFCRoss]

You need to get a life and a job if you spent 150 hours completing a game.

Over almost a 2 year period? That's nothing, even though I've worked since I was 20 (4 years now)

Still, playing computer games is a better way of passing time than whacking off to porn because your wife doesn't put out anymore. 

[chelseachelsea]

You need to get a life and a job if you spent 150 hours completing a game.

Over almost a 2 year period? That's nothing, even though I've worked since I was 20 (4 years now)

Still, playing computer games is a better way of passing time than whacking off to porn because your wife doesn't put out anymore. 

So you are married as well???   I been living within a harem for 4 years now, every night is a "put out night".

[bealec]

I don't think I've ever 100%'d a game. All that collecting 100 of a certain item or Killing all of a certain creature stuff bores me. (Which is surprising considering I was a WOW player and that's basically all WOW is)

I usually play through the campaign/story mode. Complete that then move on.

But then I would describe you guys as nor hardcore gamers where as I'm more casual. Not as casual as to be taken in by gimmicky crap and family games but I hardly ever buy a game on, or within a month of, it's release date now.

[harv]

Got Pikmin 3 delivered today and forgot how awesome the franchise is! Just finished Day 1. A brilliant idea, Miyamoto at his best imo. Haven't killed any Pikmin yet but I know I'm going to feel sad and guilty when I do...will probably have nightmares lol

Along with ZombiU, Lego City Undercover, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and Batman Arkham City this is a must-own title for the Wii U. Not bad, 5 must-own titles for the Wii U in 8 months and there's plenty more coming this year by the looks of things.