Why isn't there more of Vales 'Director'?

JonB wrote:

I think with Batman it was some of the other tools. Specific places you could press a button to spray explosive gel, or particular panels you could pull off the wall with some gadget or other to open new routes. As Chalice says, anyone who thinks that's some sort of Metroid style gameplay needs to play Metroid again.

i actually think the batman games do a pretty good job in that regard - at least Arkham Asylum. most of the things you mentioned would be a side effect of a tool, nearly every gadget in that game can be used anywhere and as a weapon. having played some SM recently there's a lot of needing a specific gun or ability to open a door, in that regard TR and Batman seem very similar, though TRs weapons were mostly pointless outside of the bow.

IanHamlett wrote:

Grabbing onto a ledge that breaks away and makes precisely zero difference to the inputs required. Fuck that. Tomb Raider did a variation of this that actually worked pretty well. A building might be crumbling while you jump, it wouldn't make a difference to you right this second but it would make you change your next move.

if i'm not mistaken didn't TR make you press something if the ledge you were hanging from broke? i recall Lara losing grip then having to re-establish.

Vela wrote:

Fucking Enslaved did this too. Insipid design.

I didn't get that far with Enslaved. Like Tomb Raider and Castlevania there were climbing bits that involved simply following the path of highlighted handholds. It's not a game if all you do is press X and whichever direction moves you towards the nearest glowing bit of scenery.

In the original Tomb Raied games you actually had to work out which the correct path was, and take some risks. That makes it a game.

Smang wrote:

if i'm not mistaken didn't TR make you press something if the ledge you were hanging from broke? i recall Lara losing grip then having to re-establish.

Yes but I think that had been done a few times before TR. The bits that I liked had you sliding down some rapids towards an obvious jump onto an obvious grab that looked like the end of the segment. You hit grab but smash straight through the rotten wood and carry on the sequence. That and the QTE catch made the mild peril bits bearable.

There's ARMA if you like realistic bullet damage. I think I'd be fine if they just rebranded damage as "probability of being hit growing".

JonB wrote:

Vela wrote:

Fucking Enslaved did this too. Insipid design.

I didn't get that far with Enslaved. Like Tomb Raider and Castlevania there were climbing bits that involved simply following the path of highlighted handholds. It's not a game if all you do is press X and whichever direction moves you towards the nearest glowing bit of scenery. In the original Tomb Raied games you actually had to work out which the correct path was, and take some risks. That makes it a game.

Yep. Even uncharted does this and it is just tedious.

JRPC wrote:

I know it's a tricky nut to crack, but I really don't like in 3rd person stuff like LoU or whatever, how you can get hit by bullets and not die. Really breaks the immersion for me.

Not sure the solution. Maybe rather than having a health bar, enemies hit the floor around you/ near miss you Bond-style, but fill up a recharging 'pressure meter' or something, and when it's full bullets are more likely to hit and kill you.

OMG I THINK I'VE JUST CRACKED THE NUT!!!

This is fucking brilliant idea and I think they could easily do it right now. Would be even better if there wasn't a visible meter but they used sound design to build tension, maybe heart beat racing getting louder etc so you are not quite sure if get he next shot could be a hit.

I seem to remember GRAW or GRAW 2 kinda doing the 'hit probability' thing, when you popped your head out of cover you could see the bullets go by and get gradually closer to hitting you until you finally get winged by one, usually took 3-5 seconds IIRC. Was really easy to exploit once you knew, I finished it on the harder difficulty no problem. There was pretty much always a delay between being being seen and getting shot.

Playing a Character that have to slaughter hundreds of enemies out of context. Playing TR at the moment and my god is Lara one hell of a one woman army. The game constantly throws up small groups of enemies to kill and theres no challenge, just the slow erosion of any sense of peril or immersion to be honest. Uncharted was similar to this. At least with games like Gears its set in a warzone. 

On a similar note, some of the damage that Lara takes in cut scenes undermines you dying from smaller or less dangerous hits. Many games are guilty of this - die from being just at the edge of that grenades blast radius but in a cutscene you survive the plane exploding while crashing into a mountain while holding a puppy.

RedDave2 wrote:

Playing a Character that have to slaughter hundreds of enemies out of context.

Industry wide. This can fuck off. Full Spectrum Warrior managed to make one guy behind a bin a real challenge to your 2x 4 man teams and that was in a war zone. Modern shooters are just re-skinned Space Invaders and we need a rethink.

I keep wanting to just start a thread to say Black Flag is shit.

It may open up and be kinda cool once I get into whichever cities it's set in, but it basically covers every sin mentioned in this thread.

Every design decision is wrong, IMO.

I mean, you're dropped on a desert island, you don't have gear, you're chasing an assassin, you're a pirate in a ripped shirt, and you have a hud map that looks like freakin Far Cry 3 once you've unlocked everything. perma 4 buttons in the top right, health bar in the top left, random something in bottom right. Plus any time you pick something up or get something, you get taken to some sort of massive menu that makes you feel like you're using bizarro windows.

In combo with what feels like a closer camera than the first 2 games, it leaves very little room to actually look at the world.

I didn't particularly notice anything amiss about Phelps running round shooting people because he was a cop in America and I kinda just went "Yeah, ok".

The sailing is excellent, but still hamstrung by having an icon on the map for stuff like dive spots or whales to hunt. All that shit should be emergent free form goodness.

Black flag is a more or less a pile of shit. when you get off the boat it's just like the other 20 ac games - mostly AC3 which is not a good thing.

also according to the game the Caribbean seas were fucking busier than Piccadilly Circus during rush hour. and don't even get me started on the 'story'