For me, Nier:Automata just had more ambition than any other game this year, and I'm the kind of guy who will always award major points to something that reaches for the stars (even if it sometimes falls short). Switching from character action to SHMUP to twin stick shooter, designing a narrative that places you in control of totally different characters with different abilities only after seeing the credits roll, and a story that doesn't settle for the surface level, freshmen philosophy themes common to works involving AI all scream ambition.
It isn't perfect, but it has more good things going for it than most games even bother to try.
@scojoe66: Gotcha, thanks. What you said made sense; there's a balance between going in blind and knowing enough to still get some fun out of solving it. Not sure if I could get any joy out of it, but maybe that's more down to me.
First off, thanks to the crew for putting this up. Watching them go insane is great entertainment, but with that in mind:
People who are into Destiny, is this raid fun? Because it looks like hours of tedium coupled with at least a few (and apparently one major) glitches, and this is only part one. All the props in the world to the crew for sitting down for so long in order to provide some good content, but holy shit, they were yelling "dog bottom!" for over six hours and it felt less like a group having fun and more like a descent into madness, and THEN it glitches out on them.
I respect the fact that really good group of players could probably speed things up by a significant fraction, but if the GB crew's experience is anywhere near average, then I am obviously missing something fundamental. Even just looking at some of the design decisions (was it really necessary to put an annoying red tint over the screen when someone dies?) makes me scratch my head.
(I also understand that this may not be a Destiny specific problem and that MMOs, which were never my thing, also hit a lot of the same beats that leave me wondering where the fun is, but I've got Destiny 2 in front of me right now so that's where I'm pointing my finger.)
It just seems like the "fun part" is figuring out how the raid works, but that's actively detrimental to actually playing and finishing the damn thing to a person without unlimited time and patience. Seems like they're ready to give up the "fun part" and just have Brad tell them what to do for the sake of actually doing it.
I assume the rest of the game is not like this, so don't take it as me shitting on Destiny 2 in general, just what I'm seeing on video.
I always thought a fair amount of my hate for this game came from the fact that we didn't get a proper launch day Mario game like 64 (although I do love Luigi's Mansion), and after waiting for a year they gave us thisinstead, but now it seems like no, I was right and this game is pretty trash. Sometimes fun, sometimes clever, sometimes cute, but mostly trash.
It makes all the glowing reviews a bit baffling. I can be kind and see myself giving it a 7/10 (graphics and charm marred by a poor camera, some wonky controls, and a smattering of questionable design choices), but take a look at this video and tell me where all the 9.5/10s come from:
Even Jeff gave it an 8!
We haven't even seen my least favorite part yet: trying to steer a little boat on a lake of lava with one bump against a wall killing you, which I think is a required part of the game as it may come right before the final boss. I distinctly remember that thing handling like a nightmare, and I was fairly decent at the rest of the game, so it makes me wonder if the crew will have the same problem with it that I did.
@andrewjplant: @kestrelpi: Besides what @comradesolar said about the seeding order, XCOM does a lot of fuckery behind the scenes to your rolls (depending on difficulty) that it never shows you. It's very rare, at least in XCOM 2, for a shot listed at 60% to actually be a 6 in 10 chance of hitting. I did a little blog post on this a while back as XCOM 2 allows you to deep dive some of the code a little easier than the first game, but I'm sure the stats are out there for Enemy Within as well.
The short version is, on top of the rolls not really being random (a string of numbers is generated at the start and will apply to shots in order), XCOM will "cheat" in your favor (in the sense that the real percentage is never displayed) to varying degrees depending on difficulty, from increasing the chance you hit after a string of misses, to decreasing the chance you get hit depending on how many people you've had killed on a given mission, and so on.
I think the sad part of all this negativity is that Dan actually did quite well (far better than his first turn) and seemed to take both the strategic and tactical portions more seriously than before, and all of that is overshadowed by the fact that he decided to rename a previously customized character.
It's a joke that's just not working for a good amount of people.
Further proof that beating XCOM doesn't mean much if you did it by save scumming on Easy. ;D
But really, I'm having fun with this series, and I think Dan's "As long as I got mine everything is going fine" attitude will make for some fantastic moments as Abby realizes just what a mess she has on her hands every time it's her turn. I think people need to embrace the schadenfreude a bit; they never had a great chance (or even a 50/50 shot) of beating this on Ironman, as it's antithetical to making an entertaining video. You need to take your time, think about your moves, plan ahead, gear up properly, etc, etc, and it just doesn't jive with a 50 minute feature with rotating players.
My advice to everyone is to calm down and enjoy watching the world burn, because some of these missions, especially Newfoundland, are leagues harder than this. The canonical ending is failure, after all. :D
If you are used to save scumming your way through XCOM, playing Ironman is a big shock, even on normal. You really need to expend a lot more mental energy on every move, and sure-damage (grenades, flamethrowers, etc) becomes far more important since you can't just reload when you don't get that crit that you needed. Impatience is far more deadly when popping multiple pods as you can never take that move order back.
Normal is quite kind (I did a write up on XCOM 2's hidden bonuses at the various difficulty levels, and similar mechanics exist in Enemy Within), but as I usually play on Hardcore/Commander I am probably biased as that's a step up, especially when you remove some of the hidden buffs via ini editing.
Either way, this will be an interesting series. I'm curious how long they make it; losing troops has a snowballing effect on the difficulty, as the perks really start to stack up the later you go, so one can usually tell when a run is impossible far before it's actually game over.
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