Jolt Country

As many of you know, the only interesting person playing video games any more is lethargic. He also has the most important opinions about games going right now.

I therefore have questions about his opinions on various games.

Any of you, of course, can answer this question. I would like to encourage Pinback to get his wife to come here because we ran off everyone that would attack her opinions and her opinions are VALUABLE.

C-can I start? May I start?

Lethargic, do you play any of those Bethesda RPGs? Oblivion? Morrowind? Skyrim? What is your TAKE?

My take is that I love them in theory. I can get totally immersed for about a week. I couldn't stand the way leveling of monsters was done in Oblivion. I do install all the add-on packs for graphics because it seems that Bethesda makes incredibly ugly people.

Yes.

Bethesda has lethargic's SEAL OF APPROVAL.

I enjoyed them a lot more when I didn't own so many games. It's hard to look at all the games on my shelf and think, oh man, another 6 weeks and I'll get to play one of those! Skyrim is a game I did not sell because I want to play it again. But if I ever will is a big question.

My thing about those is that I always hate the way people complain about them having bugs. These games are massively huge. I can't imagine the amount of work and time that goes into making a Skyrim. It just doesn't seem humanly possible to me that they could actually get the game released without it having bugs. Sure, it sucks if my game locks up or something, but that doesn't wipe out the fact that 99% of it was great.

And on that note, anybody who complains about day one patches can suck a pile of dicks. You know what happened back in my day when a game came out with bugs? NOTHING. You blew in the cartridge and hoped it helped, then you took it back to the store and got something else. Why am I suppose to be against day one patches? Oh, I hate these guys making sure the problem they found is actually fixed before I start playing it. Ooooh. That sucks.

One thing I've grown to dislike about RPGs like Skyrim is how leveling up is meaningless. Because as you level up, the enemies level up at the same rate and the game still gets harder even though your character is supposedly getting better.

Logically I would think if I start a game at level 1, by level 80 I should be the biggest bad ass in the entire game by far. I shouldn't have to fight a boss, I should BE the boss. The game should get easier as my character gets better but in reality leveling up is, at best, a constant stalemate and a number by your name that is pretty meaningless.

The only game I've seen try to tackle this issue with any success was Transformers: War for Cybertron. They fixed it by splitting the game into two sections. The first half you play as the Decepticons and the second as the Autobots. So as you got better as the Decepticons, it was reflected in the story, they ended up kicking the Autobots ass and took over Cybertron. You felt like you won. But then it switches and all of a sudden you're these lowly Autobots trying to fight back against these bad ass Decepticons you helped raise up. So now you gotta get better all over again as new characters and it makes sense why the game gets harder even though your characters are improving and you're getting better at playing.

Lethargic's Ten Commandments of Console Video Games

1 - A (xbox) or X (PS3) shall ALWAYS be jump.

2 - Y or Triangle shall ALWAYS enter and exit vehicles.

3 - Thou cut scenes shall always be skippable and pausable.

4 - Thou red barrels shall always explode.

5 - Collectibles shall never add up to more than 100 and/or take long to find than playing the actual game took. Looking at you Arkham City!!!

6 - On that note, thou achievements/trophies should always be trackable in game. If thou is attempting to smite 10,000 enemies thou should know how many thou lack. And there should always be a way to see where collectibles are on the map after beating thou game. Looking at you GTA IV pigeons!!!

7 - Thou games must always have subtitles.

8 - All thou games shall allow inversion of up/down controls.

9 - Thou DLC shall always add single player content. Multiplayer is nothing but assholes shooting each other in the faceso who cares WHERE they do that? Screw your map packs! Also there shall only be ONE pre-order DLC bonus for EVERY store. I'm not buying the game at 20 different stores just to get everything the game should already have. Looking at you Injustice!

10 - I want to play video games with my actual friends. Shove thou online co-op up thine asshole. One major advantage consoles have always had over PCs is that all you needed to play games with your friends was a second controller. Thou games shall bring back thy split screen!! I had to play co-op in Saints Row 2 with some guy from South Korea at 7 in the morning every day!

Another thing I hate.

I hate when you play a game and you develop all these cool powers. Then you play the sequel and you start off still having those cool powers. But then after the first level they come up with some bullshit reason why all your powers get stripped away so you have to spend the whole game regaining the powers you already had.

Presented with having a taste of all the awesome stuff I could do but, "NO! There wouldn't be a point if you kept all the cool stuff from the beginning!" retrieval games, I usually just turn it off and never come back to it.

If you want to add another point to your list, one old cliche was letting you BRIEFLY play an overpowered character in a context that let you know that you wouldn't be controlling that character for long. Sephiroth from FF7 comes to mind, as does I think Blood Omen.

These models of gameplay are for me at least, inherently disheartening as the developers obviously didn't know what else to do.

Oh, that reminds me. Things I hate. Japanese numbering.

You can't have Final Fantasy 12 part 6. THAT MAKES NO SENSE. That's part 18!

And the Street Fighter games. There's like 4 different versions of Street Fighter IV now. Just release Street Figher V already!

Could you imagine a western company doing that? Here's Halo 4. Now here's Super Halo 4. Here's Super Halo 4: Halo Harder.

I haven't played a Final Fantasy game since 7 and sometimes I think I should dive back in. Then I look at the games and I'm like I don't know where to start.

lethargic wrote: Could you imagine a western company doing that? Here's Halo 4. Now here's Super Halo 4. Here's Super Halo 4: Halo Harder.

We did get Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach and Halo: Spartan Assault. And games such as Final Fantasy X-2, Super Street Figther 2 Turbo, etc, etc. were essentially just trying to meet the consumer's demand for more of the same (especially in the case of Final Fantasy where each game is its own contained world... BUT I WANNA SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO YUNA?! the masses screamed).

lethargic wrote:I haven't played a Final Fantasy game since 7 and sometimes I think I should dive back in. Then I look at the games and I'm like I don't know where to start.

Ignore FF 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and all of their offshoots: play FF9 and enjoy the last sane JRPG that was trying to be "enjoyable" then call it a day unless you want to replay FF6 (because Shadow really would slit your momma's throat for a nickel).

This thread sucks.

lethargic wrote:Another thing I hate.

I hate when you play a game and you develop all these cool powers. Then you play the sequel and you start off still having those cool powers. But then after the first level they come up with some bullshit reason why all your powers get stripped away so you have to spend the whole game regaining the powers you already had.

Wha??? What game is this? Is this Saints Row? I can't recall a game doing that.

I do recall BioShock making the "Big Daddy" the more fearsome enemy in gaming and then BioShock 2 starting you off with the power of a feebleminded, disembodied sewerdick.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Wha??? What game is this? Is this Saints Row? I can't recall a game doing that.

Yeah, Saints Row does it. But pretty much any franchise where you level up and develop powers/collect weapons does this.

God of War does it every game. You usually start the next game with powers and then something happens to strip them away so you can collect them again.

Mass Effect 2 opened up with completely killing your character and having it brought back to life with everything gone. Mass Effect 3 had all your stuff stripped by the Alliance after you were arrested.

Assassin's Creed does it. Hell the FIRST game did it. You start off with everything, then have all your weapons stripped. Yet, it didn't make sense that you lost the ability to counter. Countering wasn't a weapon. It's like the character was mind wiped.

Ass Creed 2 changed characters so that made some sense. Ass Creed Brotherhood started off with the fully equipped character but your room got hit by a cannon and your weapons were destroyed and you had to find everything again.