[Mr. Mechanical]

Yeah I feel you guys. But if you want those kinds of games to start approaching the type of game your talking about you need to play it without the minimap or HUD in general. The collectible aspect is easily ignored that way and you explore and discover things in a more natural or organic way. You come to appreciate the environments themselves and the little details that are there pop out more at you.

I don't mind much that modern AAAs like AssCreed are basically game systems comprised of little more than a bunch of nested Skinner Boxes (the devil you know and all that). They're trying for mass appeal but the masses are a bunch of diverse groups so AAAs pretty much have to rely on psychological trickery to pull in the kinds of numbers they do (some interesting parallels with propaganda and the like I think). This would probably make a good blog post actually.

But yeah I don't begrudge anyone not wanting any part of that!
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[Felonious Monk]

Still making my way slowly through Divinity: OS.

Seem to have most of Luculla Forest locked down. Had some trouble getting pastthe sleeping goblins. Only Wolgraff was stealthy enough to get past. Finally solved the problem by barricading the entrance of their...barracks? Sent a couple summons to lure them through the side gap in the fence. I was then able to take 'em out one or two at a time with a buffet of fire and poison arrows, adding a stun spell occasionally for good measure.

Also, i find the leech perk extremely useful, since my characters often find themselves standing in pools of blood O_o

[CubaLibre]

I have been calling these games "checklist games" for a long time now. GTA5 did the same thing to me.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Mr. Mechanical]

Having checked all the lists in GTA V (and not making any kind of progress on the secret post-100% meta-game) all I do in that game now is wander around with no hud and try and find my garage without looking at the pause map so I can get a cool car to drive around in.

It took about a decade but the "open world" genre is kind of stagnant now. Unless we're talking about super hero games or open worlders where the player character has some kind of super power. Stuff that makes traversal interesting (AssCreed kind of has this with its parkour but fucks it up by being AssCreed, i.e. the parkour doesn't always work like you want etc.).

Super hero games can make up for a dull open world by having decent traversal systems (Spider-Man, Prototype) and non-super hero games can make up for lack of interesting traversal by having a rich or uniquely detailed world (GTA). Few games get it right on both fronts (Crackdown).

This would also make a good blog post.
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[Marshmallow]

[Talbain]

Getting rid of the minimap or HUD fundamentally changes what the games are, but that aside, it doesn't ultimately change what the games are about. They aren't games about exploring a space in interesting ways, they're about gathering "stuff." Not interested in necessarily begrudging the design, it's clearly effective, but I leave the game feeling like I didn't actually capture any of the experience it wants to portray.

It feels like it comes out of the system of game design that reminds me most of games like Pilotwings 64 or Wave Race 64, whereby just wanting to enjoy the game's scenery and the experience of gliding or riding a jet ski is undermined by the game telling you (and setting a time limit on!) exploring the space. One of my favorite things to do in Pilotwings 64 was to just fly to a place and land on it, enjoying the scenery I found by intention and sometimes by accident. It was fulfilling to be able to run into those scenarios and really be able to experience discovery, not a chest giving me 20 gold or whatever.
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[Marshmallow]

The only modern open-world games that have made me feel like I'm actually exploring and discovering things are the Elder Scrolls series. They're great at that, though I don't expect other games to do it in the same way.

[RadRad]

Picked up Fez again.
I finally got 16 cubes and ignorantly thought I was going to finish the game, only to find a really cool new area... and a door with 32 cubes needed to unlock.
This game is like being inside the mind of a Rubiks cube. Or Phil Fish's brain, I guess.
It makes me anxious, always feeling lost even with an overworld map outline.
I want to quit playing it, but my OCD is making me feel I have unfinished business and need to find the remaining cubes to finish the game!
Ugh...
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http://www.iamthefourth.com/

[Tulpa]

you just got to the point in the game where I recommend you have a notebook on hand because the puzzles are going to get myst levels of devious on you.
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[Hojulas]

[Talbain]

If you're interested in jumping into the black hole that is Skyrim modding, there's a mod for that.
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[Raziel]

On the open-world games:

Yeah, they have become stagnant in terms of design, especially ones that have you driving cars in a modern urban environment. I just recently got into last-gen and I just have no motivation for Grand Theft Auto games anymore, and from impressions I've heard that they have remained fairly conservative, it's just doesn't do anything for me. I like driving video games, but I just don't want to spend almost any time on feet in urban open world games.

I recently played the first Assassin's Creed (haven't played any others) and the only way to make that game tolerable was to turn off the automap, and metagame such that I could access my map screen only at the top of the eagle towers. It made it better, but it's no substitution for a good game. The parkour traversal did allow for better memorization of my surroundings eventually, and the cities were more memorable because it was in such a foreign setting, but it feels somewhat soulless. Not to mention the annoying copy-paste beggars, scholars and public speakers. Overall it felt that the game was designed for using an automap and setting waypoints, so my attempt in going against it wasn't ultimately very rewarding. Maps are important, but I wish they had just given me a compass, a static map with the more distinct landmarks and give me general directions as to where my target or person of importance is located. Hell, you could even have a set of NPCs fixed at certain points that you could ask directions from. In the end it was still a shallow piece of shit though. Amusingly enough, the insane amount of those collectible flags did not bother me as much, because the parkour traversal at least made them somewhat fun to collect. Unlike GTAs, where they place collectibles in areas where I would almost never bother to find my way to because remaining on feet just sucks any fun out of it.

I am currently playing Red Dead Redemption and this is the game where a) riding a horse is so fun that I rarely use instatravel and b) while I'm using the automap, it doesn't bother me because there are many natural landmarks and inhabited houses here or there which don't really trigger quests and such, but just add liveliness to the world. The fluid random encounters work exceptionally well. All in all, even without overwhelming you with 100+ quests, there's a lot of nooks and crannies in RDR's world which really make you ponder "I wonder what went on here". Also, the treasure map thing is awesome. This is something I wish I could see more in games,less of being given some pointer on my GPS or an automap.

I admit it's hard to create a sense of placement in these open-world games such that you could actually memorize them well, but one could at least try. I think it's fine to have automap for people who want it, but I think nowadays it's unimaginable to even think of way around it, so developers probably won't bother to design with that in mind.

[Mr. Mechanical]

Yeah the treasure hunting in RDR was one of my favorite parts about that game. There's a similar thing in AssCreed 4 where you find treasure maps like in RDR that mark a spot in a particular location, but the only clue you have is the picture that's drawn on the map.

Open world games need more stuff like that. I hope as time goes on developers will move away from minimaps and try to design their game worlds such that each area is distinctive enough that you don't need the minimap to get around, like RDR or GTA V (I'm just going to assume Cycle hasn't spent a lot of time in the "flyover states" because Sandy Shores, Grapeseed and Paleto Bay all read as very different environments to me).

Replacing the minimap with just a compass is a step in the right direction. It worked great in the newer Fallouts and Skyrim.

And actually, AssCreed was in fact designed to be played without the hud from the beginning. I remember the developers encouraging people to try playing that way and I even made it through the whole first game without using the hud, just relying on the eagle vision and npc cues for where to go.

As an aside, keeping the game designed to be played hud-less might explain why as the series wore on so many of the story missions are simply following npcs and hiding amongst the crowd to eavesdrop on their conversations. An explanation besides mere laziness/designer burnout, I mean.

But yes, the copy-paste element is the worst. GTA at least doesn't have copy-pasted buildings or areas any more (though assets are definitely reused) and it does have about 50 RDR-style random events but in order for the world to feel truly lifelike it needed about 3-5x that amount. And those events did repeat (as they did in RDR) depending on their spawn location so that wasn't very good either. Stuff like knocking over a money truck worked because the truck could just spawn anywhere and take a random path through the city. But the things like the purse snatcher fell flat because it always happened to the same woman on the same street etc.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Also I've been playing Binary Domain since I have a bit of a third person shooter itch that still needs scratching after Mass Effect 3 and god damn I love this game.

Mainly it's the story and the cutscenes. The shooting is alright. Scoring headshots is satisfying and just difficult enough. But I find myself hurriedly blasting through the robot hordes so I can get to the next cutscene and watch things unfold even more.

I'm only on chapter 2 so far, about to go for a swim up some drainage pipes after taking out the big spider robot (this game has some cool boss fights/set pieces) so I'm still pretty early going.

I also like how your squad mates either trust or don't trust you depending on how you answer their conversation prompts. I'm guessing they perform better in battle the higher your trust rating.
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[allensmithee]

Its certainly a Nagoshi title. He really is a student of Suzuki but he brings a different philosophy to his games.
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[Felix]

word

[Mr. Mechanical]

He's the guy behind the Yakuza games, right? I haven't really played any of those but maybe I should.
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[evnvnv]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[allensmithee]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[notbov]

are we still talking about open world games

my Xbone adventures started with grabbing a copy of Sunset Overdrive and finished the story bit a couple of days ago and my god this was the most fun I've ever had zooming around a city because the whole things feels like it was designed to be in a game and not just an open world city and the movement options compound with that design goal and then they throw combat on top of that and man

it's like a way less terrible version of JSRF in that the combat is actually something and the platforming is fun (probably should have prefaced this with that I'm not Future's biggest fan) and you have something to do that isn't grinding and jumping and that fucking air dash. playing missions and defense stuff is almost like another Smilebit Xbox game, Gun Valkyrie, where the game is daring you to not touch the ground and to dodge everything and keep killing and continue that combo and making you a minor god for doing so.

man, I liked this game so much that I'm even on board with all the humor in it

my next Xbone adventures will be playing my first Ass Creeds in IV and Unity because why not, they came with the thing, but after I finish up D4, which I'm concerned about since I figured out what was going on in episode 1 before Ace Boston Detective with a Pet Woman did (not that it isn't fun or delightfully crazy).
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[Mr. Mechanical]

This page is reserved for open world game talk.

Sunset Overdrive is one of the three games I want to play on the Xbone (the others being D4 and the Halo collection). I watched a few video reviews and it just looks so bright and colorful and fun.

Xbone needs to get more games I want to play on it.

I made a little bit of progress in Binary Domain last night and I've upgraded my ship a bit in Black Flag. I'm going to play one or the other of those for a bit tonight. Or maybe get back to picking through Lego Marvel Super Heroes. I think I'm over halfway through the story mode (haven't started the free mode levels yet or any of the extra stuff).
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[notbov]

fair warning to you, you're probably gonna want to give BD a 2nd playthrough (spoilers:how much your crew likes you affects the ending and there's a different ending for getting everyone at level 3 or above) and the hardest difficulty (either Survivor or No Mercy, can't remember what it's called) is plenty fun on its own

been playing some Nosgoth too since it's now in open beta and aside from freenium nonsense and the fact that it exists instead of a new single-player Legacy of Kain game, it is fun and well made and probably one of the better multiplayer experiences out there at the moment. it's a lot like if Left 4 Dead was about tight deathmatch action instead of Health Bar Grand Prix. y'all should give it a cursory play at the least.

(I just want the game to not implode under the crushing weight of having no playerbase like my last love Super MNC did, why does no one like the games I like and then they die and CoD still gets a hojillion people buying it every year

I should just suck it up and learn Dota already)
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[ArOne]

[CONSUME_PRODUCTS]

enjoying grim fandango besides how counter-intuitive some of the puzzles are

[Deets]

[ArOne]

[parker]

[Rud31]

I'm playing Dying Light and I fucking hate it.

You can co-op with anyone but if they are farther in the story than you are then nothing you do counts towards your own story. Not even side-quests.
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My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[Rud31]

I hate Dying Light so much that it makes me want to quit video games forever.
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My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[RobotRocker]

Is there a point Dragons Dogma gets good? I got up to Gran Soren. Went for the first quest on the Wyrm hunt at around L15 and started to head north now bandits are coming out of the goddamn walls. I buffed my character and pawn and hired two more and still get my shit wrecked. Any pointers because it's heading to this-shit-is-wackville very quickly.

Oh and a quest bugged out and put an NPC on a roof. Tried to shoot them with an arrow to get them to move. Got arrested.

No, actually fuck you videogame.
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[Ronnoc]

Dragon's Dogma 'gets good' because the combat is fun, so if you're not enjoying that a whole bunch you can probably call it.

[RobotRocker]

[Talbain]

The combat starts off really difficult entirely because of items. Once you get some powerful weapons you'll bowl through enemies (armor matters less and is mostly helpful for stopping status ailments - which only becomes relevant towards the endgame). Upgrade some early weapons and even those can crush most enemies. Character level makes little difference. A few class levels for certain abilities can help a lot though. Do you play melee/ranged/spells? Spells end up being the most powerful option, while melee tends to be useful on only a small subset of enemies (mostly magic golems). They're all viable, but melee is the toughest option in the early game.
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[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

GTA: Chinatown Wars has a bonus mission where you get jumped by a gang of hookers seeking revenge for all the hooker-killing of previous GTAs.

You win by killing them all.
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[nkcyborg]

I went out to Main Event with my girlfriend's coworkers and was delighted to find a bunch of Sega arcade cabinets. They had Outrun 2 SP, Time Crisis 4, F355 Challenge 2, a JAL-branded flight sim, and a Japanese-language F-Zero AX that I'm pretty sure was deluxe. I'm not sure how or why this particular main event got them but I now know that Mondays have unlimited play cards.

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Keeping with the Rockstar theme I finally, finally started Red Dead Redemption.

I already like how it feels like there are substantive ways to interact with the open world apart from violence. Actions like wrangling horses or herding cattle feel like they actually had as much thought put into them as shooting people in the face.

There's still some really silly video gamey stuff too but hey
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Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Mikey]

I'm playing Steam Library Roulette and wound up starting a game of Grid 2 and man I think I've played too many Codemasters racing games because their career modes all blend together so much.

[Schwere Viper]

GRID 2's presentation is pretty bland in comparison to past efforts, so that won't help either.
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HeavyViper@Twitter ~~~ HeavyViper@Soundcloud
Blog: Machines That Sing