-
16 votes
-
Baldur’s Gate 3 is causing some developers to panic
81 votes -
Tekken 8 | Release date and exclusive content reveal trailer
6 votes -
Making Doom and building the FPS industry at 100 miles per hour | John Romero interview
12 votes -
The next Battlefield game will be a "reimagination of Battlefield as a truly connected ecosystem"
16 votes -
Four friends built a ‘Hypercube’ to play Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
35 votes -
Mortal Kombat 1 | Official Banished trailer
11 votes -
Street Fighter 6 | AKI teaser trailer
12 votes -
Tekken 8 | Azucena reveal and gameplay trailer
13 votes -
Tekken 8 | Raven reveal and gameplay trailer
11 votes -
The offbeat, wonderful Keita Takahashi, creator of Katamari
20 votes -
The team behind Super Smash Bros. Brawl
6 votes -
Hasbro wants old Transformers games to return, but Activision lost them
18 votes -
Developers restore “retail” Xbox emulators after Microsoft crackdown
15 votes -
87% missing: The disappearance of classic video games
27 votes -
The making of Noctis, the 'No Man's Sky' forerunner whose creator retreated from the world
12 votes -
What's a sequel you were disappointed by?
Warning: this post may contain spoilers
See title. I thought this might make for an interesting topic and I can't see one like this in the search, so...
What sorta got me thinking about this - a couple days ago, I noticed that Dying Light 2 got a sizeable update, with a pretty heavy emphasis on changes to the game's parkour mechanics. I absolutely loved the first Dying Light, as well as both Mirror's Edge games - parkour and other kinds of momentum-driven gameplay are my jam - so that got me curious enough to check it out again, for the first time in a year.
I played for a few hours, got some of the way in, and... felt pretty underwhelmed. It certainly feels better than it did last time I played, and the change to retain momentum during parkour moves does feel pretty nice... but it still feels far too slow and floaty to me. It feels awkward and unresponsive to me. On top of that, the combat updates - while I actually appreciated DL2's changes to the combat over DL1's (a major gripe I've always had with DL1's combat is that sometimes zombies take just one or two hits and sometimes they take twenty, and I have never been able to detect any kind of pattern to it - combat level, game progress, weapon damage, etc., none of them seem to impact it so I have no idea what's up with it), playing it again now... left me feeling pretty disappointed.
I booted up DL1 for the first time in a while the next day, just intending to compare how it feels - and I've since found myself drawn several hours into it. Even in the first half hour of the game, where your climbing's super slow and everything, it feels so much more snappy and reactive - it feels good. And while my previous gripes with its combat are still present, it feels so much better to me now than DL2's does (for the most part - fighting human enemies still sucks). I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but there's just something really visceral and satisfying about it that DL2 doesn't have.
As I've been playing DL1, as well, I've been thinking about its story again. As much as it's maligned for its story, I think it's actually a really interesting subversion and deconstruction of expectations in a lot of ways - while that could be a thread (or video essay, I've thought about it) of its own, the way I see it: despite how the intro and story set him up, Crane actually fails pretty hard at being a hero until towards the end. I mean, the very first thing he does is take a crowbar to the back of the head, get bitten, and get someone else killed. It's a pattern that continues throughout most of the game (and even The Following, I'd argue, even though I don't care for it much). I find it pretty memorable beecause of that, even if it falls flat in some places.
Meanwhile, Dying Light 2... I honestly couldn't tell you much about the story? It didn't leave any kind of impact on me at all. I'm not really the kind of person who plays games for their stories very often (unless it's something like Ace Attorney where that's explicitly the point), and I have to admit that I went into DL2 with low expectations to begin with (I held off getting it at launch because of Denuvo, by the time I did pick it up reviews were already fairly negative; and I tend to view "your choices really matter!" in advertising as a huge red flag so that wasn't a good sign either), but even so. It might be in part because I actually quite liked DL1's ending - I found it pretty refreshing for a post-apocalyptic zombie game - so DL2 throwing that out didn't sit well with me from the get-go (also part of why I'm not too keen on The Following, but that's a different matter).
Overall, it just sorta left me thinking about how... even though I'd tried to go in with tempered expectations - all I really wanted was a fun zombie-flavoured parkour game, where climbing and jumping and swinging and stuff felt fluid and rewarding - I still found myself left feeling pretty hollow about it, even after an update that allegedly addressed some of my biggest issues with the game. It's especially frustrating, because the Inner Circle (I think that's what it was called, I can't remember - the second city map) is really, really cool and I would absolutely love to just aimlessly run around it... if the movement didn't feel floaty and awkward. Stuff like climbing to the top of the VNC Tower felt exhilarating and awesome - I could catch a glimpse of something excellent there, but it was so outweighed by everything else.
So... Yeah. I dunno, I thought this'd make for an interesting question. Have theere any been any sequels you've played that left you feeling underwhelmed, in comparison to the previous game? If so, why?
alright maybe some part of me just wants to ask this so i'd have an excuse to waffle about dying light and its story a bit but still i think it's an interesting topic nonetheless
EDIT: formatting51 votes -
Sonic The Hedgehog was released this day in 1991 on Sega Mega Drive. What are your memories playing Sonic?
I still play thanks to emulation, back then when i was a kid never had a console and only played with friends. What are your memories playing Sonic?
42 votes -
“Sims 5” job listing suggests freemium, live service model
20 votes -
Pikmin 4 | Overview trailer
20 votes -
Alfred the Great against the Vikings: How realistic is England in CK3?
7 votes -
TF2 but Sniper is banned. What happens? I tried it out - gameplay experiment & analysis
16 votes -
Super Mario Bros. Wonder - Nintendo Direct 6.21.2023
66 votes -
Super Mario RPG - Nintendo Direct 6.21.2023
87 votes -
Pikmin 4 - Nintendo Direct 6.21.2023
16 votes -
Pokemon - What is your favourite game in the series and why?
My favourite game is Crystal Version for the Game Boy Color. I've been playing Pokemon since the beginning - Red and Blue. I loved the original games, and as a kid I saw the hype for the release...
My favourite game is Crystal Version for the Game Boy Color. I've been playing Pokemon since the beginning - Red and Blue. I loved the original games, and as a kid I saw the hype for the release of Gold/Silver online. Gold/Silver's release is easily the most excited I've been for anything in my life. When they finally came out in the west, they hit all my expectations and more. The introduction of genders, time-based events with a visible day/night cycle, new types, new Pokemon, held items and so much more made the games a hugely more in-depth experience compared to the originals. No other game in the franchise has offered such a marked improvement over the previous to date.
Crystal, being a third version, is essentially an enhanced version of Gold and Silver. It doesn't blow them out of the water, but what it does add is nice. Animated sprites, some feature refinements and an improved storyline makes it the quintessential Gen II game in my opinion.
Remakes of Gold/Silver - with some Crystal features included - exist in the form of HGSS for the Nintendo DS. A top five Pokemon game in it's own right, I like it slightly less because they don't have quite the same vibe the originals had. This is almost entirely due to nostalgia, but it's what I believe.
Do you agree? Do you disagree entirely? Share with us your favourite Pokemon game and why.
36 votes -
GTA Online: San Andreas Mercenaries now available
4 votes -
Street Fighter 6 | World Tour, Fighting Ground, Battle Hub game mode trailer
7 votes -
Now that Amnesia: The Bunker is out and has a demo, what are your thoughts on it?
8 votes -
Pikmin 4 — Rise to the Occasion | Trailer
7 votes -
In anticipation of Amnesia: The Bunker we've decided to enable Steam Workshop for Amnesia: The Dark Descent
19 votes -
What makes Tetris the Grand Master so good?
7 votes -
Kena: Bridge of Spirits
5 votes -
Starbreeze Studios and Prime Matter have dropped another teaser trailer for cooperative heist sim sequel Payday 3
3 votes -
Amnesia: The Bunker | Gameplay demo
4 votes -
Review: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the best Star Wars game since Knights of the Old Republic
6 votes -
WW1 horror Amnesia: The Bunker delayed again, but only by a week – now due to release for PC on 23rd May
5 votes -
The games I wish I never replayed
9 votes -
Amnesia: The Bunker feels like a new beginning for the series
1 vote -
Why game archivists are dreading this month’s 3DS/Wii U eShop shutdown
10 votes -
Amnesia: The Bunker | Story trailer
5 votes -
You have only experienced 25% of Sonic 3
6 votes -
Horizon Zero Dawn critique
4 votes -
Minecraft Legends | Official gameplay trailer – released 18 April 2023
2 votes -
SteamWorld Build | Announcement trailer
3 votes -
Exclusive: Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon details with Hidetaka Miyazaki and Masaru Yamamura
5 votes -
Atari revives unreleased arcade game too damn hard for 1982 players
7 votes -
Elden Ring - and Bill Clinton - win Game of the Year
7 votes -
The Last of Us | Official trailer
7 votes -
Why it's rude to suck at Warcraft
8 votes