WHAT PLAY YOU!? Version 3.0

[FLips]

RoboCop Rogue City

Just finished this and can't recommend it enough. Everything the demo got right, the full game gets it even better.

Mindless running and gunning with destructible environments and gruesome gibs pad out the main parts of the proper levels and they're a blast. The gunplay is over the top in the best ways and RoboCop rightfully handles like a tank, rounding it out with a very satisfying upgrade system for both RoboCop's trademark pistol and RoboCop himself that means you can play the game your way. Do you want Robo to have great armour and a shoulder dash to flatten grunts, or do you want him with great detective skills and bullets that ricochet off surfaces? You can combine it all in any way you want, and by the game's end you can do the majority of it if you've gained enough XP.

The parts where you're not running or gunning, you're exploring Old Detroit just like you see it in the movie. There are recognisable landmarks everywhere from the Steel Mill where Alex Murphy lost his life to the OCP Office where ED-209 went rampant. If you've seen Robocop 1 and 2 there are dozens of easter eggs and locations that are very true to the movie and it was a joy to find them and explore them. Even small things like the police cruiser causing sparks on the exit ramp make the game feel like a true labor of love.
While you're in Old Detroit you can partake in side missions which have you either Serve The Public Trust or Uphold The Law, both acting as a somewhat Good/Bad scale that will eventually effect how people react to you and outcomes for certain characters during the ending, including yourself. These can be as simple as handing out parking tickets or as dangerous as busting a hidden drug den. The cast of side characters that you meet during the course of the game are also plucked straight out the films; most notably Anne Lewis who is a crucial part of the game as she is in the films. The general rule of thumb is if they were in the first two films and didn't die they're in this, with most of them bearing a proper likeness. There are original characters too, some better than others.

There is plenty of character work for those not wanting a straight shooter too, with Robo still fighting with his humanity and his tug of war relationship between Detroit and OCP still at the forefront. The story never really puts a foot wrong other than a couple of bland gang leaders they've had to put in to pad it out and the comparisons between the main bad guy and Hans Gruber I've seen in various places is dead on the money. That being said he's a decent villain overall.

It is a little janky in parts, being one of those games where the main characters all look great but the secondary ones are cut and paste, sharing the same voices. Minor glitches like throwing an enemy through a wall or characters standing inside each other during cutscenes cropped up now and again but not frequently enough to be an issue.
The slow methodical walking pace of Robo is sometimes a drag in the open Detroit areas too, though they keep it fairly small and contained to prevent it becoming a glaring issue.

I think as a standalone game, the scores of 7/10 are fair, but if you're a fan of RoboCop I would say this is essential. I don't want to spoil anything, and I'm not sure it's canon, but it bridges the gap between RoboCop 2 and 3 very faithfully and if 3 didn't exist would be a great conclusion.

Great fun, highly recommended.

 

 

[5pints 2.0]

I'm not very far into the game. I've just finished the locating the car side mission. How many hours did it take you to complete? 

[Keith Houchen]

Thought I’d give the last FIFA incarnation a go. You can see why it’s the last one, feels tired and sluggish but on the plus side, a lot of the joy is missing so it does feel more proper football. 
 

Am I going to uninstall it? No. #GoodGarthing 

[FLips]

23 minutes ago, 5pints 2.0 said:

I'm not very far into the game. I've just finished the locating the car side mission. How many hours did it take you to complete? 

Not sure. I started it Thursday and played a bit Thursday and Saturday night then had a proper go today. I would say like 20 hours maybe? I wasn’t keeping track

[Merzbow]

So I restarted Alan Wake again and it's definitely clicking more this time around, I think what I enjoy most is actually the Night Springs videos you find on TV's in the world. They're little Twilight Zone like stories that are genuinely funny, one links right into Control and another was obviously about Twin Peaks doppelgangers.

Combat is eh but I'm playing on easy just to breeze through it and see the story and world.

[SpiritOfTheForest]

I started playing Vampyr for the Halloween season. It took me quite a while to really get into because it's slow, methodical and very dialogue heavy but now I'm totally hooked on it. It's set in 1918 London and it's one of the most atmospheric games I've ever played - amazing soundtrack too. It's one of those games where every small choice you make has ramifications and it does a really clever thing where you're a vampire who is also a doctor and you are constantly having to choose between sticking to your noble path and helping people or giving in to your grim bloodsucking instincts and feeding off the London populace. Feeding off people is your biggest source of XP and thus levelling up so the game guides you towards this path but I'm doing a pacifist playthrough and by sticking to the straight and narrow I have my conscience intact but I am always underlevelled giving the game a fair bit of challenge.  

Seems a gem of a game that went under the radar. Anyone else played?

[RedRooster]

6 minutes ago, SpiritOfTheForest said:

Seems a gem of a game that went under the radar. Anyone else played?

It's been on my list for a while, but I've never gotten around to it. Your glowing review might change that, though - it sounds really interesting, and I've just finished Spider-Man 2, and I'm almost finished Mario Wonder - so I'll need something new to...ahem...sink my teeth into. 

Edited November 6, 2023 by RedRooster

[Merzbow]

6 minutes ago, SpiritOfTheForest said:

I started playing Vampyr for the Halloween season. It took me quite a while to really get into because it's slow, methodical and very dialogue heavy but now I'm totally hooked on it. It's set in 1918 London and it's one of the most atmospheric games I've ever played - amazing soundtrack too. It's one of those games where every small choice you make has ramifications and it does a really clever thing where you're a vampire who is also a doctor and you are constantly having to choose between sticking to your noble path and helping people or giving in to your grim bloodsucking instincts and feeding off the London populace. Feeding off people is your biggest source of XP and thus levelling up so the game guides you towards this path but I'm doing a pacifist playthrough and by sticking to the straight and narrow I have my conscience intact but I am always underlevelled giving the game a fair bit of challenge.  

Seems a gem of a game that went under the radar. Anyone else played?

Yeah I've played it and I wasn't so much a pacifist as yourself.. I'd kill certain characters in a sense of twisted justice but would do everything I could to help most people.

I would say it's a surprisingly political game but it is by the same people as Life is Strange after all.

[Keith Houchen]

20 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

Thought I’d give the last FIFA incarnation a go. You can see why it’s the last one, feels tired and sluggish but on the plus side, a lot of the joy is missing so it does feel more proper football. 
 

Am I going to uninstall it? No. #GoodGarthing 

About this. Started career mode, helped Cov to the top of the championship by Christmas but then did my ACL and was sidelined for 5 months. The boss told me I wasn’t in his plans and sold me to Genk but as the transfer window was closed, the contract began at the start of next season. 
 

Made it back for the last few games of the season and clinched the title for Cov, but in my last game for the club, some wanker from Huddersfield two footed me and the ACL went again, this time for 7 months. I did admire his send off and nodded approvingly. 
 

Anyway, eventually managed two subs appearances for Genk before the boss accepted an offer from Lazio for me. My girlfriend found it side splittingly hilarious how offended I was at the thought of joining those fascists. I was pretty mad to be fair. I turned it down, and a few other offers, because it’s every boys dream to win the Belgian league. 
 

Fucking Lazio. And they aren’t even called Lazio in the game. It was Latinum or something. Even if it was gold pressed it’s a no. Fucking Lazio. 

[Nexus]

I liked playing Vampyr but I really didn't enjoy the combat, so I ended up dropping it. The systems within it were interesting, though. 

[The King Of Swing]

Vampyr is definitely rough around the edges but well worth sticking with, imo. 

[seph]

TIL somebody made a Silent Hill gacha

 

[Merzbow]

#fuckonami

Seriously, and after the pretty awful mgs collection that looks worse than the 360 version.

[waters44]

A few outlets are reporting that GTA 6 will be officially announced this week with a trailer next month. I hope it’s true but it wouldn’t surprise me if Rockstar milk GTA V for another 10 years! 

I love how GTA has grown outwards in so may directions with each release so I’m really excited to see what boundaries they’ve pushed this time round. 

I hope we don’t have to wait too much longer. V trailer was released Nov 11 but the game didn’t arrive until Sept 13. RDR2 trailer Oct 2016 with game coming out 2 years later Oct 2018. Let’s hope they do a Fallout 4 and say here’s a trailer and it will be out in a few months!

[Loki]

It'll be interesting to see what direction they take with GTA VI.

For the past 15 years the impetus across the games industry has been to deliver "more" - larger open worlds, more gameplay dynamics, more mini-games, more dialogue options, more weapons and skins and blah blah blah.

That sort of growth is exponential.  Let's say it takes me a month to edit and implement the dialogue tree for companion x.  If you put two companions into the next game, you might think it would take 2 months, but if it's in combination with extra gameplay dynamics, dialogue options etc then it ends up being 6 months for each, so 12 months of work instead of 1.

This has led to team sizes exploding - you might have had 100 people, say, working on GTA 4 but 500 working on GTA 5, and GTA 6 might be 2,000.  So the cost risk of these AAA games has also massively increased.

But ultimately you're still providing one game to one consumer at a time with only so many hours in their day.

What's happened over the last few years is that large franchises have delivered mega-sized games and the communities have shat on them.  You can see the pattern with Starfield - it's had a myriad of criticisms and many of them are the exact opposites of each other.  It's too story-driven but also the universe is too big.  Space combat isn't what people want but also fps combat isn't what people want, and so on.

The more gameplay dynamics you try to cram into a game, the more groups of fans you're going to disappoint if those gameplay dynamics aren't as good as the small indy game they play that ONLY does fps shooting.  The art in Starfield is INCREDIBLE but because so much of the world is procedurally generated you often get bits that don't look great, and those are the bits people screenshot.

Quite a few major games studios have over-extended into this first release window on the latest consoles, and some of them are going to go bust because of it.  I wonder if Rockstar will also be going for broke with a GTA 5 the size of the continental US, or whether they might take a more focussed approach and deliver a smaller but much higher quality game.

 

Edited November 8, 2023 by Loki