Video Game Thread 2.0

[chitoryu12]

Okay after beating System Shock 2 I decided to give the original a try. On the second level I find a switch, so I use it. SHODAN then contacts me and says "Thank you for destroying the greater part of earth for me. Please wait there to be escorted to the celebration" So I look a little left and see a sign that says "Laser Control" I'm impressed a game would let me fuck up that hard. an A+ to you, Looking Glass Studios.

I guess the Portal developers played plenty of System Shock beforehand.

[Art Vandelay]

Whoever it was that decided I should hunt cougars with a knife is a fucking asshole. Those things are bad enough when you get to use a gun.

[ThunderWulf]

When it comes to stealth though, the Crysis AI can sometimes be a special kind of stupid.  I've gone into cloak right in front of them WHILE they're shooting at me/. Instead of keeping shooting for a few seconds or lobbing a grenade in my direction, they stand around for a couple seconds like "Where'd he go?"  before fully reacting.  And the bad guys KNOW I have a nanosuit that can cloak.

I saw the beginnings of an LP of Crysis 3 on its release, and a CELL soldier at the start shot at the player after sneaking up behind him (not really using stealth against the player; he was just distracted shooting at someone else and got flanked). After the player cloaked, the soldier immediately started spraying the entire area in front of him, just waving his gun around and hoping to hit something.

They will do that sometimes, but not always.  And they may lob a grenade where I dissapeared, but several seconds AFTER I've cloaked.  It may also be that I always play on the normal difficulty the first time I play any game.  Usually games like Crysis have much harder stealth on the higher difficulties.

Spoiler'd for length.

(click to show/hide)

Thief was, in my opinion, one of the only games to ever do stealth right.  Yes, Splinter Cell was very good, in that regard, not sayin anything else.  However, Thief gave you exactly what you needed, and little to nothing else: a way to tell how visible you are (light gem), some kind of feedback on how loud you're being (one of the earliest examples of 3D audio with actual, nearly-believable propagation mechanics), and...the one thing a LOT of stealth-based, or stealth-inclusive games fuck up: your character isn't an unstoppable killing machine.

The latter point is a huge one, because if you can effectively tank all your enemies...what's the point in hiding?  Why sneak around when you can just cleave a few dozen bastards in two with a sword, or blow them to kingdom come with an assault rifle?  Thief both actively and passively punished you for fucking up the whole sneaking thing: guards would be harder to fool, bodies you'd have to hide, blood to clean up, guards hearing someone screaming as they die from an arrow to the eye or a sword to the spine, and on higher difficulties, outright failing you on the mission, thus forcing you to restart either from the beginning or your last save, should you kill.  Hell, on the highest difficulty, the game outright forbids you from killing anyone outside monsters and steampunk robots.

However, given the tech we've got nowadays, I fail to see why we haven't had another stealth-based game that can rival Thief, both in gameplay and storytelling.  For fuck's sake, we've got games like fucking Crysis, whose graphics can end up looking as close to photorealistic as we can get in a game...and, from what I've seen at max settings, it gets pretty fucking close.  Why the hell can't we say, cut that graphics power requirement in half, have a game that looks good without having graphics that'd give any photographer a raging hardon for at least an hour, and use the resulting freed-up resources to make an epic stealth game?

Then again, we do have Thief 4 in the works, so maybe I'll see it realized, at long last.  That is, if Eidos Montreal aren't too busy not showing us a god damned thing, not even fucking concept art.  Its been some four fucking years, and we've gotten practically nothing outside a logo.  I understand not showing things because they can be changed, especially at the early stages, but one: its been four god damned years, and two: give the fans fucking SOMETHING for waiting this damn long.  A piece of concept art, sound clips, trailer, anything.  Drag your feet too long and give us no real proof outside a few forum posts that you're actually working on this game, and most of the fans will likely end up walking away to other things, and you'll end up fucking your game right in the ass.

One recent game that I do believe has done an excellent job with stealth was Dishonored.  Great game, and the stealth was very well balanced and actually challenging.  A lot of people I've seen review it have flat out said it's the best stealth game since Thief.

[Art Vandelay]

I should really get around to playing Thief at some point. Though I doubt they'll impress me more than Hitman. Why skulk around in the shadows like an asshole when you can simply convince anyone present that you're nothing more than yet another face in the crowd, and are in no way connected to whatever Bad Thing is about to go down? If you ask me, that's how it's done.

[chitoryu12]

I'm a bit disappointed that Metal Gear Rising ended up being turned into a cheap slash-em-up. I was genuinely interested in not only the "free cut" mode and the dynamic destruction of scenery and enemies, but how they wanted more of a "hunting stealth" where you used hiding to actively close in on a target and take it out instead of just sitting in a corner waiting for the bad guys to walk away.

One game that sounds similar to that concept is Far Cry 3. I haven't gotten a chance to play it yet (and I'm very disappointed that I haven't been able to go and snag a copy yet), but it seems from the stealth playthroughs I've seen that it definitely supports that kind of rapid pace hunting and killing instead of always having to painstakingly sit behind cover and wait for everything to be positioned perfectly for a single kill.

[kefkaownsall]

I need 2 play FC3
Im imagining trying to do half the stuff you do in that came in a COD.

[chitoryu12]

I need 2 play FC3
Im imagining trying to do half the stuff you do in that came in a COD.

Serious question: is English your first language?

[Shane for Wax]

I need 2 play FC3
Im imagining trying to do half the stuff you do in that came in a COD.

Serious question: is English your first language?

From what I recall Kefka is from a European country.

Also I was in the middle of a mission in inFamous and the damn game gave me a game breaking glitch. God dammit.

[Saturn500]

[Finds out that The War Z is back on Steam]

Well, Valve is officially dead to me.

Eh, they probably figured nobody would bother getting it at this point, even as a joke.

[kefkaownsall]

IM AMERICAN STOP CORRECTING ME
Seriously I told you guys to stop.

[chad sexington]

I've been enjoying AC3 so much I decided to 100% it - got to around 90%ish, with nearly a hundred hours of gametime, when... my PS3 died.  AAAAAARGHHH!!!

[Vypernight]

I should really get around to playing Thief at some point. Though I doubt they'll impress me more than Hitman. Why skulk around in the shadows like an asshole when you can simply convince anyone present that you're nothing more than yet another face in the crowd, and are in no way connected to whatever Bad Thing is about to go down? If you ask me, that's how it's done.

That's one reason I love Hitman.  That and dropping pianos on people's heads, throwing them Royal Rumble style over railings, sniping them from across the map, and even getting them killed by their own security. 

Heck, in one level, you can mass-murder nearly an entire hotel full of people and make them all look like accidents.

[RavynousHunter]

I should really get around to playing Thief at some point. Though I doubt they'll impress me more than Hitman. Why skulk around in the shadows like an asshole when you can simply convince anyone present that you're nothing more than yet another face in the crowd, and are in no way connected to whatever Bad Thing is about to go down? If you ask me, that's how it's done.

Aah, but you may very well still be the new guy, and the new guy is the first to be blamed whenever something goes awry.  If they don't know anyone was there, but things have just plain screwed up, who can they blame?  Ghosts?  Jesus?

That, and Garrett is a MAN.  An awesome man.

(click to show/hide)

The man gets his eye ripped out by an evil nature god.  What's his response?  Escape the prison they threw him in, get help from the evil god's enemies, then for good measure, sneak into that evil god's own fucking dimension, bypassing all his protections, stealing everything in sight, and using good old thievery to ruin his ritual to destroy the world...and end up with the spell backfiring, killing said god in the process.

That's right, Garrett robbed a god to DEATH.

[Art Vandelay]

That's one reason I love Hitman.  That and dropping pianos on people's heads, throwing them Royal Rumble style over railings, sniping them from across the map, and even getting them killed by their own security. 

Heck, in one level, you can mass-murder nearly an entire hotel full of people and make them all look like accidents.

I have to say, the opera house level in Blood Money is my favourite. Replacing the fake pistol with a real one so that someone else can unknowingly shoot your target for you? Simply sublime. Granted, immediately dropping a chandelier on the next target and a few more people who just happened to be in the way is just a tad suspicious and an all around uncouth way to follow up the first hit, but still.

Aah, but you may very well still be the new guy, and the new guy is the first to be blamed whenever something goes awry.  If they don't know anyone was there, but things have just plain screwed up, who can they blame?  Ghosts?  Jesus?

That, and Garrett is a MAN.  An awesome man.

Maybe it was an inside job? Maybe it was someone going for the hidey-sneaky approach to stealth? Then again, you may well suspect the new guy who appears for a few minutes, then vanishes immediately after something explodes and the guy he replaced is found unconscious, naked and stuffed in a dumpster, but fat load of good that'll do when he's long gone and you've nothing to go on but a few fleeting glances if his incredibly unremarkable face.

Besides, blood Money is way ahead of you on that one. After each level, you get a newspaper article of this hit you just did. If people did indeed recognise you, then it'll say so, and there'll be police sketches of you included, at increasing levels of detail and accuracy the more people see you for who you are. Then of course, security will be a lot tighter on later maps and people will have a much easier time seeing through your disguises.

IM AMERICAN STOP CORRECTING ME
Seriously I told you guys to stop.

Dude, seriously. It is genuinely difficult to figure out what you're actually saying. It's just a few extra key strokes on your part, it's not that difficult. It hardly warrants a full on melt down.

[chitoryu12]

One of the best things about Blood Money is that there's just so much to do. Just the opera house alone, you can:

1. Replace the blank pistol with a real one.

2. Disguise yourself as the actor and shoot him on cue with the real pistol.

3. Snipe him from the rafters perfectly in time with the fake gunshot.

4. Kill him in his dressing room between rehearsals with a poison syringe, gun, knife, fiber wire, remote explosive, or any other sort of weapon you have available.

5. Drop the lighting rig on him.

6. Run in guns blazing and massacre everyone in your way.

And that's just one of the two targets.