GWJ Conference Call Episode 476

Overwatch Beta, Star Wars: Battlefront, Fallout 4, Five Tribes, Your Emails and More!

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This week Shawn, Elysium, Julian and Amanda get caught up on emails and some Twitter questions!

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00:01:10 Overwatch
00:14:08 Assassin's Creed: Syndicate
00:16:28 Star Wars: Battlefront
00:31:40 Five Tribes (boardgame)
00:34:03 Fallout 4
00:42:08 Your Emails
01:15:55 Thread of the Week

I don't have any personal experience of not being aware of everyone's negative opinion on a game but I did once talk to a group of lads online who were convinced that the scarcity of copies of Too Human was down to the fact that everyone was hanging onto their copies because it was such a fantastic game.

Higgledy wrote:

I don't have any personal experience of not being aware of everyone's negative opinion on a game but I did once talk to a group of lads online who were convinced that the scarcity of copies of Too Human was down to the fact that everyone was hanging onto their copies because it was such a fantastic game.

WHAT

That's what I thought but I refrained from saying anything. They really loved the game.

I liked Certis' term "spinning tires" in relation to Fallout 4. It sums up that reluctance to progress too quickly, but then the ennui of NOT progressing.

Also I liked the advice -- just do more main quest. This inspired me for my next play session. I made the main quest my active quest, set off resolutely toward its quest marker and barely went a block before being distracted by a bunch of Super Mutants, then stumbling upon an interesting-looking building guarded by raiders. It seems I needed a purpose to enjoy being diverted from it.

I (like probably most other people here) tend to be too involved in the gaming community to ever be unaware of the general feeling towards something I am playing. This mostly stems from me hardly ever buying/playing newly released games, so between this forum, Reddit and my podcasts I generally hear everyone else's thoughts about a game months before I ever play it.

However I do experience this all the time with movies (and to a lesser extent, tv shows). I don't read reviews of movies before I watch them like I do with games, so I will probably only have a basic idea of what people think of a movie before going to watch it. I quite often find myself enjoying something, before going online and learning that apparently it's terrible.

I do try not to let it lessen my opinion of what I have just watched, if I enjoyed it while watching it then to me, it was a success. The flaws I see pointed out may prevent me enjoying it as much from watching it again, but it shouldn't change my opinion of the movie.

Most of the games in my top-ten list are games that either nobody heard of or that nobody liked. I don't have as many stealth contrary games (eg: a game I love that I'm not aware everyone else hates) these days, but I once upon a time that was all I played.

I did own almost every game released for the Jaguar, after all.

If anything, finding out the bulk of public opinion is against me on a given game only redoubles my resolve, and I'll tend to overplay the games good points because I'm in defense mode.

One of these days, I'll include a pronunciation key with my handle. Also, it's kah-leh-DAWN forest.

Felix Threepaper wrote:

I liked Certis' term "spinning tires" in relation to Fallout 4. It sums up that reluctance to progress too quickly, but then the ennui of NOT progressing.

Also I liked the advice -- just do more main quest. This inspired me for my next play session. I made the main quest my active quest, set off resolutely toward its quest marker and barely went a block before being distracted by a bunch of Super Mutants, then stumbling upon an interesting-looking building guarded by raiders. It seems I needed a purpose to enjoy being diverted from it.

Despite the ludonarrative dissonance (I know, I know) in Fallout 4, the player-character's motivation is far more approachable than "Save the Mojave from geo-political strife" or "Save the Capital Wasteland from irradiated water and also your dad and save the world you're the Savior!" I'm very compelled to find Shawn and do the minimum amount of additional stuff necessary to achieve that. Will I help settlements? You bet. Once I find him Shawn's going to need a home, and the more I can do to make secure a home for him the better. So yes I'll take some side quests but only insofar as they seem necessary for that, necessary for finding my boy, or immediately emergent. Where I somewhat wandered the Capital Wasteland, and especially wandered the Mojave, I'm almost totally on-point in the Commonwealth.

That isn't to say my character's flippancy isn't sometimes jarring. But I'll take this over Save The World any day.

The world building in Guild Wars 2 is fantastic, this is especially apparent if you've played the original. When starting out as a Charr character the starting area is one of the main areas of the original game. The geography and many buildings are the same, but older, and you fight the ghosts of many of the NPCs from the original game. It was quite disconcerting to come across the ruins of the Great Northern Wall and remember running away from Charr hordes as they invaded 250 game years earlier.

Felix Threepaper wrote:

I liked Certis' term "spinning tires" in relation to Fallout 4. It sums up that reluctance to progress too quickly, but then the ennui of NOT progressing.

Also I liked the advice -- just do more main quest. This inspired me for my next play session. I made the main quest my active quest, set off resolutely toward its quest marker and barely went a block before being distracted by a bunch of Super Mutants, then stumbling upon an interesting-looking building guarded by raiders. It seems I needed a purpose to enjoy being diverted from it.

That's EXACTLY how I play these games.
It's a waste of time for me if I don't have some goal in mind.
I can't put important things off in real life so I'm the same way in game.
It's probably the reason I'm one of the few who don't brag that I've got 200+ hours on the clock.
It isn't about the HOURS SPENT it's about the amount of time you ACTUALLY ENJOYED the game!

"Replay value" is about as subjective as anything gets.

I don't understand the people who play the entire Mass Effect or Dragon Age series through multiple times, and they probably don't understand the 50 or so hours I spent playing Spore.

misplacedbravado wrote:

"Replay value" is about as subjective as anything gets.

I don't understand the people who play the entire Mass Effect or Dragon Age series through multiple times, and they probably don't understand the 50 or so hours I spent playing Spore.

Replayability is my gaming holy grail. Any game that I finish and want to play again gets mercilessly recommended to anyone who'll listen.

I'm listening.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:
misplacedbravado wrote:

"Replay value" is about as subjective as anything gets.

I don't understand the people who play the entire Mass Effect or Dragon Age series through multiple times, and they probably don't understand the 50 or so hours I spent playing Spore.

Replayability is my gaming holy grail. Any game that I finish and want to play again gets mercilessly recommended to anyone who'll listen.

I very seldom replay a game, I have too many unplayed ones to get to. sh*t, I hardly finish games. So a game I've replayed gets a doubleplus good recommendation.

jonnypolite wrote:

I'm listening.

I haven't got much time to be merciless this morning, so I'll just give you a non-comprehensive list.

God Hand
GunGrave: Overdose
Deadpool
Portal
Mercenaries 2
Fallout 3
Duke Nukem Forever

I didn't go back further than games you can play on the previous generation of consoles. If you have any "but... why?!" questions about specific ones in that list, I'll be happy to furnish a dissertation at some point.

Some things in negative criticism can land home with me, but not always. I remember people complaining about the first Assassin's Creed having pacing issues, but I played through it in <30min. chunks because of the nature of my schedule, and that worked about just about perfectly for me.

And then occasionally I'll hear things like Sands having trouble navigating in Star Wars: Battlefront, and I wonder if he's just playing a different game. The radar in that game seems exceptionally verbose to me, with the various sectors and threat-level gradients of red.