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RedRavN

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RedRavN

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This is my interpretation of the ending but im not sure there is really a "point" to dark souls besides your own interpretation of it.

My sort of attempted explanation is that the game is sort of asking if its more noble, or "human", to save the world by letting all the power go or by becoming the most powerful. Would you preserve the balance of natural power or assume responsibility for all, take the power and become the dark lord. The game made me think about which choice is selfless and which is selfish. But I mean the game is kind of open to interpretation.

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RedRavN

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hmm..... This is kind of why I was afraid of picking the game up. I kind of felt done with assassins creed after brotherhood. For me the AC games always felt they did a lot of things in one package but did none of them well. They have these huge time spanning stories that never coalesce into anything meaningful or go anywhere interesting. You have these great secondary characters that are just used as set dressing ( although I heard the ones in 4 are pretty good). You have all these upgrades and things to get that only make the already trivial combat more pointless. You have all these collectibles but put a big white icon on the map so getting them is just a trial of patience. You have a half assed and unbalanced stealth system that is either too forgiving or makes some missions a royal pain. The on foot combat is still just as much of a mess as it ever was.

Its a shame because the developers are so good at making these breathtaking historical settings come to life. Ubisofts army of artists know how to make a game look and feel authentic. Its really jarring how "video game" everything else is. I hope that at some point soon they go back and scrap all these systems (most of which are carried over from AC1!) and just redo the game part of the game to make it not suck. I do realize that some people like AC gameplay but for me without a bit of an overhaul i'm just kind of bored. I like challenging games with responsive gameplay.

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RedRavN

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I really thought tomb raider was a great game. Definitely one of the best action adventure games I have played in recent memory. One thing that got on my nerves was the amount of collectables and the amount of pointless backtracking if you wanted to get them all. They were annoying to get, added not much substance to the game and were too easy to find to be challenging. I did wish there was more of an exploration element to the game away from the main story and more elaborate tombs to explore. But damn some of the set pieces and action sequences in the game are top notch. I thought lara was a strong character as well for the most part, better than the protagonist in most games. I don't think the story is dissonant or whatever. I mean it starts off as a really harrowing escape and rescue from pirates, in a way that feels pretty grounded. Then the game sort of slowly transitions to a more traditional video game story that does end up falling a little flat for me personally, but the game hints in this direction from the get go. So I didn't have a problem with that. It is a bit jarring going from a scared and inexperienced lara trying to get away from the overpowering pirates to having lara kill 100s of them. They probably could have done that a bit better I think. Why bother making a big deal about trying to ground the game in some sort of realistic context if none of that is backed up by the actual game? In my opinion this is a gameplay and mechanical issue and not really a narrative one.

Probably the thing I appreciate most is that they actually tried to make lara into a dynamic character; one who changes for good or ill over the course of the game. I think they managed to pull it off for most of the game. Well its ok character development for a videogame at least. I do think that the effort makes lara croft a more interesting character to play as. In fact, lara as a character is more interesting to me than any of the story beats that are actually in the game.

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RedRavN

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Playing that game alone would not make it any more enjoyable. The game was clearly designed from the ground up as a multiplayer experience. The game needs to be rebalanced and probably completely redone to add in a proper single player. Lets just let this one burn out as a failed experiment and hope EA can start getting stuff right. Honestly, between dragon age 2(which was clearly put out way too early), sim city with all its issues and battlefield 4 still being basically a mess makes me wary of EA products in the future.

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RedRavN

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#5  Edited By RedRavN

Does anyone remember farcry 2? You would get a mission and then have 20 minutes of driving to get to the objective and even more driving if you wanted to get your buddy mission. They would constantly respawn enemies that would follow you around even on the main roads which if you didn't kill would blow up your car with the mounted machine gun. Its like they had a great concept for a game but never had time to playtest or balance any of the stuff surrounding it. So it made what was at the core a great game and made it such a chore to play that it affected the game critically and many gamers hated that game.

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RedRavN

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#6  Edited By RedRavN

Yeah I agree about metro last light. On top of being a pretty darn good game it also looks amazing if you've got a PC that can handle it. Its more than just having the best lighting or texture work, its how the level design works with the graphics to make a truly believable environment. I am going to vote for metro:last light.

Arma 3 has some of the best looking natural landscapes and forests I have seen in a game. The individual pieces dont make arma look outstanding but its the scale of it all that is so impressive to me.

Crysis 3 has some of the most eye catching graphics I have seen. Everything in that game is exaggerated by design. Ridiculous lighting and crazy particle effects.

Battlefield 4 I do not think looks that impressive to be honest. I think it basically looks identical to battlefield 3 with slightly more interesting maps. Obviously 64 player games with that kind of fidelity is impressive but I think the kind of drab art design lets the game down.

Honorable mention goes to tomb raider. Its a game with no clear strengths in terms of graphics but also no weaknesses. Its just a well put together and beautiful looking game with fantastic looking environments and a nice amount of variety.

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RedRavN

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Keep in mind that launch software is kind of in a functionally different place than a true next gen designed game. Anyone remember how framey and kind of ugly perfect dark zero was? The graphical leap is coming and I would expect we will be seeing some amazing stuff at E3. A poorly optimized game will always run like shit no matter what platform it's on. That said, it is kind of disappointing that these machines are clearly going to struggle to run most games above 720p. One good aspect about this is that hopefully this console generation will be shorter. I think a 4-5 year console generation is much better. Perhaps with more people having access to HD TV and with 4k on the immediate horizon there will be more of a reason for console makers to try and think about new products.

But even look at just COD2 compared to COD ghosts on x360. COD2 looked great when it came out but its pretty clear its a split generation game if you go and take a look. There was a lot of room to grow even on the same engine tech.

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RedRavN

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I go for cheaper earbuds for on the go and more expensive real headphones for listening at home or on a plane or whatever. The more expensive earbuds definitely sound better than cheap earbuds but still not close to good headphones. The problem is that earbuds are always breaking on me and certain ones don't fit my ears great. I would recommend earbuds in the $30-40 range. That seems to be the sweet spot in terms of price to performance ratio.

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RedRavN

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#9  Edited By RedRavN

I been wanting a new console since I don't really care for PC gaming. People that enjoy that is fine, but the whole "everything needs to be at least 1080p and 60fps" is dumb to me. I enjoy looking at these games when I have the chance, I just don't got the money for it now. But yeah, there aren't many games at all for the launch of either console, but the games coming out I want to play anyways, so why not have the console that can run them smoother now. By the time I finish the games that come out at launch, everything else will start coming out.

Well I dont think its dumb that people really love 1080p and 60fps. Trust me, once you've gone there its really hard to go back to the current consoles. I have a midrange PC now, so I don't really see a huge reason to grab a Ps4 other then I kind of want to play killzone. Its just that the console exclusive games just aren't enough to justify the cost. I think for anyone that already has a decent enough Pc it makes more sense to wait for a while to see how things shake out and see what actual games are coming. If you don't have a PC it seems like it would be a great upgrade for sure. I mean, battlefield 4 on Ps4 is functionally identical to the PC version and looks great. I think its awesome that consoles have reached hardware parity with at least a midrange PC so that means better looking and better games for everyone.

But I think the launch lineup for both consoles is a bit lacking. next E3 is going to be a bloodbath.

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#10  Edited By RedRavN

I think that a big factor in some of the more troubling female character designs in games is that generally the primary agent of change in most games is violence. If you are using a male character, you make kind of a caricature of a real man; one who is singular in focus, leagues more capable than his enemies and emotionally resolute. These types of characters are just power fantasies. They are the self idealized to the point of flatness and physically perfect. I mean, Nathan drake never feels traumatized for any real amount of time or complains about a bum knee after effortlessly climbing a cliff. They tried to make the new lara croft act like a normal non-psychotic human being in the beginning of tomb raider, but then promptly shelved all that mostly well done character development after they realized, "ohh yeah, this game is about murdering people". What they should have done is made lara become more and more savage and psycho as the game went until she reached complete tragic lunacy by the end. But the devs. were probably to scared by marketing to make a universally unattractive female character. This has been a problem with both male and female characters.

The problem with adapting female characters to the medium is that the history of the real world brings its own baggage into the equation. Namely, the repression of women throughout most of modern history. When you try to make the female action caricature, the result comes of different in terms of social context than if you were to make an equivalent male. Its also a problem that developers seem to feel the need to sexualize their lead characters. I think that the intention is to create an empowered well rounded woman but they mess it up pretty consistently by making her overly emotional, brutal, ridiculous and overly sexualized so that the character ends up reeking of artifice. Like I said above, I think that you can get away with the ridiculous artifice with male characters but with female characters it just rubs people the wrong way because of the real world issues that are in such a state of transition in the modern world. I think the solution to this is to write better characters period. I really like Geralt from the witcher series. He can go from being seductive to being a brute to being a wise man in a matter of minutes, like a real intelligent person would. What we need is more of the female equivalent of that.

Moreover, it seems pretty clear that game devs. are really struggling to make any kind of sexualized character both male and female, yet feel the need to sexualize most female characters regardless. I mean really, does a female soldier or assasin need to be sexualized to begin with? I would say no, nothing should be sexy about being a mass murderer. If anything, such characters should be kind of psychotic and disturbed like the dudes from spec-ops the line. Also, it seems like devs. have weird ideas about what is sexy to begin with so instead of making a strong willed beautiful woman they just dress her up like a whore. The games industry needs to move away from this 12 year old mentality. It takes a bit more nuance to create an attractive (if your over 13) male or female character. Why is it such a barrier to make an attractive, "sexy" character that is fully clothed and responds to situations like an normal human being?