Best posts made by Hazz3r

@acidtrip-69

I'll say this once, but you'll probably ignore me because you've dug your hole already.

In the 2+ years that I've frequented this forum, I've never seen anyone treated differently 'for not going along with the "majority" opinion'. Discourse is really encouraged here because we want to see more activity, there's nothing more that we love on here that getting stuck into a good conversation.

The reason why you're receiving so much ire for your posts is because of the frankly detestable manner in which you express your opinion. It largely appears as though you're not interested in having any kind of conversation with anyone, and instead only want to express how much you don't like something, and then demanding an echo-chamber of agreement in response.

You don't like Kojima? Sure, I can entertain that opinion, but you've got to give people at least a teensy iota of intellectual discussion, because otherwise you just come off as childish and rude. Why don't you like him? Is there anything you do like about him? People can then respond with thoughts that are based on your thoughts and perhaps interject opinions and thoughts of their own. This is how discussion works, how we learn, and how we form more nuanced opinions.

But... considering you're throwing around terms like "NPC" and "STAN", I don't think that's what you're interested in, and if that's not the case, I don't think you're going to find the Forum very fun.

If you can't learn to express yourself in a way that doesn't make you come off as a petulant child, people won't like you, it's that simple.

Well, well, well.

I'm not usually very attached to games and lists and what have you, but I'm with @DIPSET on this one. This has hit me hard.

Dark Souls is by far one of the best games ever made. Period.

For a start, it's incredibly deep. There are things you won't see in this game for a long time, if not ever, if you don't play it right. Ian of EZA likes to say that the "Form is the Function" a fair bit with this game, and while I do tend to poke fun at his reliance on the phrase, it is so true. The game will never explain gameplay nuances to you, like how to engage in PvP, or how each covenant works, or what you should be doing at any one time. The game doesn't give you lots of exposition apart from the set up at the beginning, and it's up to you to just figure out what to do throughout the entire game, based purely on the wishes of the few friendly NPCs you'll come across along the way.

For example, the Dark Wraith Covenant. On the surface it's just the PvP Invasions Covenant, the game realistically has a vested interest in guiding you towards that mechanic as it's a very unique part of the game that players will likely enjoy. A few Cracked Red Orbs can be found by the player in the game world, allowing them to dabble, but they'll not fully commit without reason due to their finite, consumable nature. They can't relax and enjoy the feature.

But it's practically impossible to join the Dark Wraith covenant unless you know how. For a start, you have to completely ignore one of the very few NPCs that actually seems like a friendly NPC. You then have to, against your instinct, throw yourself in a pit, and then go beat a specific boss. All while still ignoring that NPC that most players will gravitate towards, especially on the first playthrough. Only after having beaten one of the hardest bosses in the game for new players, will you uncover Kaathe, the Dark Wraith Covenant, and unbeknownst to 95% of players, an entirely new way to interpret the main story of the game.

Most people will never have seen that content, and that's incredible. And there are lots of other examples of this, like Ash Lake and the Pyromancers. That elevates Dark Souls closer to a piece of Art than any game I've ever played. Dark Souls has not compromised in its design in order to make sure that Players get to enjoy all the content. It adds up to make Lordran feel like a world that's there to truly explore. Not a Theme Park waiting for me to see all the attractions.

Some might not like what I've described above, but I think that Dark Souls, through Lautrec, a Secondary Character that the game makes you deal with, the game teaches you that you shouldn't trust people just because they're in your safe area and they're not attacking you. By extension, this leads the player to question everything.

The game world is gloriously expansive and intricate. Everything is connected in exceedingly clever ways. For example, many guides will tell you that you need the Master Key to access Blight Towns back door. No you don't. Take the lift down into the Valley of Drakes from the bottom of Dark Root Basin. Run all the way back to the Blighttown back door, grab the key, unlock the door, and boom. You have your shortcut from Firelink Shrine to Quelaag. You can beat the game while never fighting the Taurus Demon too. You can do this easily using the Master Key, or you can drain New Londo in the early game if you're capable, and enter Dark Root Basin and the Undead Church through the back entrance. Undead Burg PvP FOREVER! 🙌

Finally, the online nature of the game was expertly done. From the things that most people will get to use, like the Soapstones, and the Messages, to the things that few will see and fewer will even understand, like the Dragon Covenant, or Vagrants. Even just the bells ringing every time someone beat the Gargoyles. What a great way to make new players feel united in what is likely the first section of the game that most new players will be having difficulty with.

All this is without touching on the normal stuff. The RPG and combat design is wonderful. It's so darn creative, with many different builds and playstyles. There's no single strategy to play the game. You just play to your strengths, and the way you want to play. One of my favourite things about the RPG systems is that you can, and probably should, find a weapon you like and then level it up using the Blacksmith. The normal weapons are the ones that are viable for the endgame, and while there are weapons that give you a short term advantage like the infamous Drakesword, it doesn't scale to end game like the other weapons do. Add in all the special boss weapons and specialty weapons, like the Moonlight Greatsword, the Black Knight Weapons, the Great Sword of Artorias. You could play Dark Souls for weeks and still struggle to obtain every weapon.

Shout out to the Balder Side Sword crew and the Zweihander posse. The Zwei got me to my first Dark Souls completion, and the Balder Side Sword introduced me to the aggressive playstyle that many don't see til Bloodborne.

Finally, the presence of a Souls Level 1 character on the Character creation screen, and the way the game is tuned. I love how more than anything, it's player knowledge and skill that's rewarded in Dark Souls. You can beat the game never levelling up your character. You can leverage the game in such a way that you can one-shot many of the bosses. I know Git Gud is a meme at this point. But in Dark Souls, that sentiment is always true. If you persevere, if you learn the game, watch that attack pattern, figure out your moveset on your favourite weapon, there is nothing the game can throw at you that you can't overcome. And that's amazing.

I think this is the biggest post I've ever written on this forum. I love Dark Souls. It's one of my favourite games of all time, and has shaped the way I look at games today. The top 3, from my best guess, are all well deserved places. One in particular I'm really happy has placed so high.

To finish it off, here's an old video from vegeta311, where he challenges himself to one-shot as many Dark Souls bosses as possible.

Youtube Video

Just to sort of interject, I think it's important to note that OP hasn't asked anyone to change the way they talk at all. He's just pointing out something that does cause him pain, as much valid feedback as anything else.

Just think it's important as the following responses are sort of framing it that way.

@axel

Suppose I should make a comment on my number #1 pick.

I think it would be fair to say that, with the exception of maybe The Sims, Counter-Strike was probably the most impactful on the industry out of all the games released in 2000. It was a pioneer in competitive asymmetrical multiplayer, something that we're still seeing innovation in today, and the first example I can think of of a mod that was acquired by the original games developer and turned into its own fully fledged game.

Every popular first person shooter has now copied its formula of bomb defusal, 1 life, game type. It was the Battle Royale of the noughties, at least until Call of Duty 4 changed the industry yet again in 2007.

I didn't discover Counter Strike until 2003/2004 when me and my friend began exploring PC gaming. I loved the fact that you could learn a predictable spray pattern, rather than the twitch shooting of Quake and Unreal. Learning the maps, player movement, throwing smokes in JUST the right place. Not picking up your weapons on the map but buying them with money you earn by playing well!

I'm just gushing at this point, but seriously, and incredible, innovative game that changed the face of first person shooters forever. I haven't even talked about the mod support, zombies, surfing, etc. If you've never played Counter Strike, pick up Global Offensive when it's on sale.

I get why they're doing it. They're going for an immersive sim like Deus Ex or Prey.

As Brandon Jones says a lot, Framing is important. I imagine there are scenes, events, story-telling that has to happen from the first person perspective in order for it to work, to have the same impact.

Boycotting a game that you haven't seen because they're making it in a way you don't like is not only entitled but close-minded.

Found it!

Assassin's Creed 3 is a really fun game and a nice midway point between the massive world of Black Flag and the relatively contained worlds of Ezio's games.

Personal highlights for me:

Homestead Missions

They seem like standard side-content missions towards the beginning of the game but this is where you will progress most of Connor's relationship with Achilles and how you will eventually make money. Not only this, but the Homestead missions see you complete missions that seem like more normal tasks. If you ever get tired of killing and maiming, give a go at retrieving a hidden treasure or helping a woodworker recover his tools. It may seem bland, but despite the limited amount of time that gets spent developing these characters, I ended the game caring about the relationships quite a bit.

Mason Tunnels

An extension on the fast travel mechanic from the Ezio games, the Mason Tunnels are a set of tunnels under each city that you can explore at will. You have to travel through these tunnels, solving platforming puzzles, in order to reach the doors leading out into the world. Once you've unlocked a door, you can then fast travel to that point using the tunnel system.

While a utility, the tunnels are entertaining gameplay in their own right, reminding me very much of old-school Prince of Persia platforming puzzles (without the time powers). Definitely one of the better experiences on offer.

Codex/Database Entries

This is pretty short. If you've ever wanted to read about the American Revolution from the context of a cynical British man, make sure you read the codex entries and what-not.

Secret Treasure Missions

Often for a cool armour set in Ezio's games, in 3 these missions put you in pursuit of Captain Kidd's treasure. These self contained missions in a small environment have often been some of the strongest points of the Assassin's Creed games and the third iteration is no different.

The Frontier

One of my favourite environments in any video game ever, the Frontier is a massive space, filled with legendary creature hunts, collectables and outposts. You'll complete missions for various clubs, like Frontiersman and Hunting clubs and generally explore a wondrous environment.

Not only this, but the Frontier is displayed in Winter and Summer, completely changing the landscape and the experience. Do yourself a favour and wait til a Summer period to complete any of the missions though! It's much easier!

Haytham Kenway

The weaknesses of Connor are more than made up for in Haytham, one of the more entertaining characters of the entire franchise, Haytham has the same charisma and joking nature as some of the more popular characters from the Ezio titles, such as Ezio himself and Leonardo Da'Vinci.

And my low-lights:

Bugs

The game is ridiculously buggy, not only are there many gameplay and visual bugs but many missions will fail to even complete. Most buggy are the Delivery Request Citizen Missions. Tasking you with creating a bunch of crafting items (meaning that you need to complete the majority of the Homestead missions to complete these missions) you will often finish collecting the materials but be unable to hand them in. The hand-in NPC will often disappear from the game world or just refuse to take your items. It's frustrating especially considering the hard-work required to get to that point. I've personally experienced bugs with many of the main missions and some Frontier missions.

Encyclopaedia of the Common Man

An on-going homestead mission, this will drive you crazy if you try and do it without a guide, and even then it's pretty frustrating. There's lots of discussions on the internet about the best times and seasons for things to happen so look it up and save yourself the trouble.

Viewpoint System

Viewpoints no longer reveal the entire map, there will be areas that you must explore on foot still and this is a significant portion of the map, including the Frontier. This is to facilitate the hardest Frontiersman challenges, where you must reveal 90-95% of each map. I have absolutely no idea who at Ubisoft thought this was a good change but it's terrible. Do yourself a favour and write off the Frontiersman Level 3 challenges! :P

Finally...

"WHERE IS CHARLES LEE?!"

Shut up, Connor...

But yeah, if a lot of my low-points were fixed this would probably be my favourite game in the series but there's enough stand-out moments than mean I end up still really enjoying the experience. I think it's unfortunate really, the game gets a lot of flack, especially with it being stuck between Black Flag and the Ezio series, that are definitely stronger entries in the franchise as a whole. However, the improvement in overall gameplay, when it works, is more than apparent in AC3, especially following on from Revelations, which in my opinion is the weakest game in the franchise.

For me the gold standard of Remakes continues to be Pokemon Soul Silver and Heart Gold. Incredible games in their own right that amplify everything that was great about Gen 2 while simultaneously revamping the game for more modern audiences. Easily my favourite Pokemon games.

Shout out to the Spyro Reignited Trilogy in terms of pure technical prowess. Most of the original source code, assets, are lost for those 3 games. Toys for Bob started development by building their own custom PS1 emulator (probably extended from an existing project) and then playing all the games a bunch and and recording all the data. They then modelled the physics engine after that data, to make sure that Spyro jumps exactly as high, glides exactly as far and runs exactly as fast as he did in the originals. They called the tool that they made the Spyroscope.

Then there's the fact that they had to grab what they could of the original soundtrack masters as well as remastering the soundtrack. Getting every all the assets together. Figuring exactly where all the collectibles were, including gems, in the original game so that they could be put in the same place in the remade levels!

When you compare this to something like the upcoming Tony Hawk 1 and 2, where the devs admit that they had a lot of the old Neversoft code handed to them, in terms of technical achievement, Spyro Reignited Trilogy is by far one of, if not the best Remake ever made.

@hanabi

And if that policeman had given George Floyd some relaxation and escapism when he said he needed it, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation.

The US doesn't need distractions right now. They need a fucking cross hair.

Very pleased with the delay. The only way we deal with these issues is when we get people to stop and actually listen, not just hear.

If we had done this in 2010, Heavy Rain would likely have made my Number 2 or 3 spot. I loved the game. I was engrossed by the story. And it was the first game of that style that I had played, having not had the information to understand what Fahrenheit was.

I loved playing as each character. The sections with Norman were a delight thanks to those nifty glasses. I could have played bounce against the wall in the police precinct for hours.

I enjoyed the chase scenes and I enjoyed the slice of life scenes. The multiple ways the story could play out was fun. And while for the most part, having all the outcomes laid out for you a la Detroit would probably have been a more fun experience overall, it was great fun replaying the game to try and get the best ending, or trying to let the Origami Killer get away with it.

It narrowly missed out on my HM for two reasons.

1. I've never been sold on the Supernatural elements of the Story, despite Cage's reasoning for their presence. It's clear that they ran out of dev time or budget, but they left these dangling threads in the game without considering the players experience.

2. In hindsight, the way they treat Madison is gross. They literally have a section of the game where you're forced to strip for some gang member or something, and you can go pretty far before eventually you're forced to do what is the obvious continuation of the scene. I'm all for titillation in games. Have Madison run around her apartment in her knickers, or have her get her cleavage out when she's trying to seduce someone. Sex sells, and people, especially men, enjoy titillation.

But don't have a character get undressed against their will and let the player fucking control that process. As a teenager, you bet I went as far as I could without really understanding why what I was doing was so weird. "It's in the game, so it must be okay". Don't put that shit in games man.

Youtube Video

But, back on to more positive things, Heavy Rain has one piece of DLC called The Taxidermist. It was a single high quality scene where there were many outcomes. It was maybe 15 minutes long, but could be replayed many many times. I got a good couple of hours out of it. It was the first episode of what was meant to be a series of DLC called Heavy Rain Chronicles. Unfortunately though, Sony paid Quantic Dream a big chunk of money to make a Move Edition of Heavy Rain in time for the launch of Playstation Move. This meant that they no longer had the staff to work on the rest of the DLC, so it got dropped and never picked up again.

Youtube Video – [00:56..]

It's a shame, because the Move Edition ended up being quite crap. The DLC isn't in the PC or PS4 release. The Move Edition is ironically the only release that has the DLC on the disc, so you'd need that to guarantee you can play it. I think it might still be downloadable seperately from the PS3 PSN Store, but who knows for how long.

So yeah, Heavy Rain has a lot of good going for it, but David Cage is a weird guy who puts weird stuff in his games. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Hey, can you guys not make veiled insults towards other members of the forum. Both of you are way out of order. It doesn't matter how strongly you feel, wishing death on someone is never okay.

This is your strangest thread yet.

@ffff0 @Axel Seconded, it might be a good opportunity for you to plug it for non-forum regulars, explain how it works in more detail and what you do to organise it, explain how you do 2 every year, one for the year past and a retro one.

It's sort of what Community Showcase is for, I think :)

Can we just go over the reason why Ports and Enhanced Ports don't count?

To my understanding, it's so that Ports of games that are already very popular and already had their time to shine don't get brought up and dominate another year, taking the place of another game.

Persona 4 Golden's time to shine was with its original release, Persona 4, and we'll get to that whenever we eventually do 2008. Despite its bells and whistles, it's ultimately just a Port and shouldn't be eligible for 2012.

Otherwise, I'm going to start arguing for Definitive Editions and the like to be eligible, and no one wants that :)

@ezekiel It’s to communicate to the audience. It doesn’t matter if it’s gameplay or a cutscene. Just because you know what a claymore looks like, doesn’t mean that people in general do, but people in general do know to associate lasers with traps and trip wires. God knows there’s been enough spy movies made.

Essentially, a sacrifice is made in realism, however important that may be, in favour of making sure the audience understands that Carlos has laid a trap for Nemesis.

Do most of my Gaming in our spare Bedroom / my Office / Junk room.

PC with a 9700K, 16GB of RAM and an RTX 2080. I've been having issues with the thermals lately. The Tower has been on the floor as a space saving measure but I was worried that was causing the overheating issues, so the wood is just a DIY spacer that I made out of a pallet.

It's a Samsung 1440p 144Hz monitor. Not sure on the make. The other monitor is a very cheap BenQ. It's nearly 10 years old. I use it exclusively as a code monitor when I don't have enough screen space on my Primary.

PS4 Pro currently hooked up to the monitor too, and a Switch plugged in that I can play sat on the couch behind me.

It's quite messy right now as it doubles as my work desk. I work on a Macbook Pro hooked up to the Samsung, lifting the keyboard on top of the books.

I have an Xbox One downstairs hooked up to a 55 inch LG LED 4K TV. Mainly use it for 4K Media but also for Xbox Exclusives if they entice me.

Not hooked up atm:

PS3, PS2, PS1.

PS2 and PS1 are both original fats. PS3 is a second hand 1st gen slim I bought last year when my Launch Day PS3 died. My PS1 is chipped, although I don't have any chipped games any more, just all my genuine games.

Use a pair of Astro A50s. I generally have really bad luck with headsets. I've not happy with these ones but I've not even had them for 2 years. I think I'm going to look to buy a new headset whenever the new consoles release.

Yay! I can use the internet again! I've also been avoiding this thread since the leaks happened. A went into a completed the game completely leak free. Which is hilarious because I called the main plot mere moments after the announce trailer.

https://twitter. com/Hazz3r/status/805185193460006912

The space is so the tweet doesn't embed.

I'd give it a 9. It's what my gut is telling me. And I still think I'm nit picking in places. There's a single pacing issue that I keep coming back to, that when combined with some other nitpicks, pushes it down from a 10.

Highlights for me:

@Capnbobamous said it first but the facial animations are out of this world. I can feel Ellie putting everything into that stealth takedown.

The environmental story telling is a treat. I really enjoy scavenging, even when I'm completely full on equipment and supplies, just in case I find something that tells me about what happened here in this place.

I really enjoyed solving some of the puzzles before I found the note that tells you how.

The 30th Anniversary and the Wifi password. With the Wifi password one Abbie even says "I can't believe that worked".

I became really invested in all the new characters. I cared about everyone all the way to the end, and I think that's a really outstanding achievement considering I only cared about the few characters I knew at the beginning.

The Hospital bossfight was insane. I thought I was playing Resident Evil for a few minutes.

Human enemies will actually call each other by name when talking to each other. "Oh God! Someone killed Alice!" It really does a lot to humanise these people. Combined with the above mentioned facial animations and and way that everyone looks like a regular person, it makes the violent overtones of the game hit on completely new levels that I don't think we're ever seen before.

This game feels like a next-gen game. It's beautiful and horrific and moving. Many scenes are so pretty it hurts.

Solid 9/10. Gonna go check out the EZA review.

This is why I instantly attached to Easy Allies. Gamers™ love to be angered by things, especially things they're already pre-disposed to hate or have a problem with.

I love Easy Allies because they focus on things they love, they lift up all games, and they make me feel good about my interest in the hobby.

In a way, as soon as these people have come to rely on the financial income that those videos bring, they're kinda stuck. Jim can't make a video about microtransactions in an EA game and say "but wait, let's look at this from EAs point of view".

YongYea is by far the worst perpetrator for Gamer™ outrage. He always spins his stories to be emotive based on previous disposition.

If he did his research into how Trademark law works, he would see that when you own a Trademark you have to dispute even the slightest possibility of a infringement, as otherwise you risk losing your rights to the trademark. Whether Monster wants to or not, if they must file something, and then it's up to the Ubisoft to take it to court and decide whether there is actually an infringement.

Again, because "Lie" is such an impactful word, they have to get it in, which hilariously means that they themselves are lying. 505 Games and Remedy never said they couldn't upgrade anyone. They said they couldn't upgrade everyone. There's a huge difference between those two statements, but what's even worse is that they actually went into detail and said explicitly that it was possible to upgrade certain groups of owners of the game but that "one group always ended up getting left out".

The problem with Video Games at the moment is that the industry still has little in the way of a reliable source of news. I think the closest thing is Kotaku and they're having their UK branch shut down!

Do not see how people continue to complain about the price.

You ask for a premium product, you get a premium price tag.

That's the sell, it's the best console to play third party titles on, and MS is stepping it up with exclusives.

Not everyone wants a gaming PC, so the argument that you can just play everything on PC is null and void.

I think this was Microsoft's best conference in years, addressing the key criticisms from the last few years, an underpowered console and a lack of exclusives.

And you can bet that if MS released a game and said that it was coming to Xbox only they would still get bad reactions off of people.

It frustrates me to no end because it really seems like they can't win with some people.

Yeah, who honestly cares about the Kojima drama at this point?

Survive looks fun and it's had a lot of positive reception from media at this point.

If you want to commit some self-righteous protest against the game over some drama that's over a year old now then more power to you. But I like good video games, I want to hear about good video games, and I especially want to hear the allies talk about good video games.

@The_Andredal They didn't remove the refund button...

You've never been able to refund games after the pre-order has been confirmed but before release date.

Seriously, the number of people willing to give in to confirmation bias and make stuff up just because it fits their narrative is flipping scary.