Why Eastern European games rock so much ?

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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

silva wrote:Kaelik, my bro, the Zone in Stalker has nothing to do whatsoever with nuclear radiation. Insisting it does only proves you know nothing of the game.
Indeed, how foolish of me to believe the pre release lore explanations, the things every character says in the game, and the current, long post game wikipedia that all characterize it as being based on nuclear events in the Chernobyl area. What a fool I am.
silva wrote:And really, if for you Mad Max as a work deals with the exact same themes and issues as The Road or Tarkovski Stalker, then the one needing to google the definition of themes is you, not us.
Silva why do you believe that Adolf Hitler was the greatest human being to ever live? Why do you believe that rape is wonderful and just. You are a monster, stop believing those things.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by silva »

Kaelik wrote:
silva wrote:Kaelik, my bro, the Zone in Stalker has nothing to do whatsoever with nuclear radiation. Insisting it does only proves you know nothing of the game.
Indeed, how foolish of me to believe the pre release lore explanations, the things every character says in the game, and the current, long post game wikipedia that all characterize it as being based on nuclear events in the Chernobyl area. What a fool I am.
Gotcha!

By citing just these sources - instead of your own experience - you just admitted never played the game (if you had, you would know all this "pre-release" info is just a cover for the actual truth).

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
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Post by Whipstitch »

Man, I know you declare victory over any li'l thing, but that one's a reach even for you given that he explicitly mentioned in-game conversation.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

silva wrote:
Kaelik wrote:
silva wrote:Kaelik, my bro, the Zone in Stalker has nothing to do whatsoever with nuclear radiation. Insisting it does only proves you know nothing of the game.
Indeed, how foolish of me to believe the pre release lore explanations, the things every character says in the game, and the current, long post game wikipedia that all characterize it as being based on nuclear events in the Chernobyl area. What a fool I am.
Gotcha!

By citing just these sources - instead of your own experience - you just admitted never played the game (if you had, you would know all this "pre-release" info is just a cover for the actual truth).
Yes, surely by citing the things said in the game, I am talking about . . . something besides when I played the game. You are fucking idiot, I played Stalker in 2007, I remember all the pre-realse because I spent months anxiously awaiting the game because of the gameplay promises they never quite delivered on. I currently have call of Pripyat Misery mod installed on my computer right now.

Are you pathologically opposed to being even remotely truthful? Do you understand what in game character dialogue is? It's the things NPCs say to you when you are playing the fucking game.

Stop raping children you monster.
Last edited by Kaelik on Sat Nov 07, 2015 5:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by silva »

Whipstitch wrote:Man, I know you declare victory over any li'l thing, but that one's a reach even for you given that he explicitly mentioned in-game conversation.
Nope, he actually asserted that what caused the zone was a nuclear disaster.

Which is the farthest as possible from the truth.

In other words: I won. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
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Post by fbmf »

silva wrote:
angelfromanotherpin wrote:Did... did people forget that silva is a liar and a troll, and no matter how many argument points you score against him, you already lost as soon as you took his bear-bait?
Hehe. Sorry to disappoint you bro.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
silva: Are you admitting to trolling and Kaelik falling for it again?
[/TGFBS]
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Post by TiaC »

Really, is there any thread that would not be improved by adding "Silva keep out" to it?
virgil wrote:Lovecraft didn't later add a love triangle between Dagon, Chtulhu, & the Colour-Out-of-Space; only to have it broken up through cyber-bullying by the King in Yellow.
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Post by Leress »

TiaC wrote:Really, is there any thread that would not be improved by adding "Silva keep out" to it?
Umm... this is Silva's thread.
Koumei wrote:I'm just glad that Jill Stein stayed true to her homeopathic principles by trying to win with .2% of the vote. She just hasn't diluted it enough!
Koumei wrote:I am disappointed in Santorum: he should carry his dead election campaign to term!
Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.
I want him to tongue-punch my box.
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Post by TiaC »

Leress wrote:
TiaC wrote:Really, is there any thread that would not be improved by adding "Silva keep out" to it?
Umm... this is Silva's thread.
My point stands.
virgil wrote:Lovecraft didn't later add a love triangle between Dagon, Chtulhu, & the Colour-Out-of-Space; only to have it broken up through cyber-bullying by the King in Yellow.
FrankTrollman wrote:If your enemy is fucking Gravity, are you helping or hindering it by putting things on high shelves? I don't fucking know! That's not even a thing. Your enemy can't be Gravity, because that's stupid.
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Post by silva »

fbmf wrote:
silva wrote:
angelfromanotherpin wrote:Did... did people forget that silva is a liar and a troll, and no matter how many argument points you score against him, you already lost as soon as you took his bear-bait?
Hehe. Sorry to disappoint you bro.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
silva: Are you admitting to trolling and Kaelik falling for it again?
[/TGFBS]
Of course not, TGFB. What I meant to say over there is that, given we are having a nice and fair discussion here, Angelfromanotherpin must be really disappointed (since his wish was that nobody spoke to me around here ever again). Got it ? :wink:

About the issue at hand, I stand by my words: anyone who actually played the Stalker games know that the cause for the existence of the Zone in the game has nothing to do with nuclear events.
Last edited by silva on Sat Nov 07, 2015 8:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

silva wrote:About the issue at hand, I stand by my words: anyone who actually played the Stalker games know that the cause for the existence of the Zone in the game has nothing to do with nuclear events.
And I stand by my statement that it is equally as true that you are a rapist.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by silva »

I´ve heard The Void is also pretty good. Its from the same devs of Pathologic. Anyone played it ?
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
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Post by GreatGreyShrike »

The Void is an interesting and unique experience that is not actually really good as a enjoyable game. It's better to experience it directly (go in blind). It's not a family-friendly game (nudity, nightmarish creatures). If you want to experience a lot of the better parts of it without the aggravation, I quite recommend cannibalk9's Let's Play of the game here. If you enjoyed Pathologic, odds are pretty good you'd probably enjoy The Void too - in some abstract design respects they are quite similar (primacy of story over playable and fun gameplay, for example).
The actual 'game' portion is really, really annoying - one fundamental part of the game is that all mechanics are obscured when you start playing. Several characters actively lie to you and mislead you about what you should be doing, and there's a lot of mechanics which are super unclear until much later. The game is extremely harsh and unforgiving. It also strongly encourages and rewards excessively tedious micromanagement. Finally, the game lets ... and some characters even encourage... that the player do things that will result in a failed run, and force you to restart and play through the game again - because the things that result in a failed run can happen 5 hours of gameplay or more before it becomes clear how and why the run failed. The game is actively hostile to the player in a variety of ways that most games are not, and basically your first run will have to be discarded and redone, and possibly more than that. This is the most annoying shit ever.

Game mechanics are also different from the norm in other ways, though - you 'cast spells' by tracing out runes/shapes with the cursor, and using different colors to have different effects. It feels weird and sort of magical at first, but ultimately the Ice Pick Lodge technology that they were using to do this isn't that great and it becomes bloody annoying to do especially when you still have a noticeable failure rate after a really long time doing it and you aren't even sure what you're doing wrong. Cool idea. crap implementation.

The story portion is interesting and unique and different from almost everything else. It's very abstract and open to interpretation.

The graphics and audio stand out as really well done and interesting - the graphics in particular are beautiful for the most part with some really,
really horrifying elements as well.

The game is more polished technically than previous effort Pathologic by the same studio, but Pathologic is more interesting as a game and honestly more 'fun' to play, as ridiculous as that sounds. The next game by the same studio, Cargo, is garbage in all respects.
I would recommend The Void to people who were looking for unique, different, bizarre videogame experiences unlike anything else on the market, who wanted to do a lot of work interpreting things and trying to understand vague, subtle hints, who didn't mind persistence in the face of the game's attempts to make you fail in really annoying-to-remedy ways. I would not recommend it in general to people who just want to play a good game that is enjoyable or fun to play.
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Post by Wulfbanes »

Working Link for the Let's Play

I played it a few years back on a recommendation, but couldn't chew myself through it. Whatever there are as game mechanics are pretty terrible. It might be worth a watch, but not a play, I'd say.
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Post by silva »

Thanks for the info, people. GreatGreyShrike' post actually sold me on the game. I'll try to find it on Steam.

By the way, is it possible to replicate on the tabletop environment the kind of experience videogames like these provide ? Hmmm...
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

GreatGreyShrike wrote:Game mechanics are also different from the norm in other ways, though - you 'cast spells' by tracing out runes/shapes with the cursor, and using different colors to have different effects. It feels weird and sort of magical at first, but ultimately the Ice Pick Lodge technology that they were using to do this isn't that great and it becomes bloody annoying to do especially when you still have a noticeable failure rate after a really long time doing it and you aren't even sure what you're doing wrong. Cool idea. crap implementation.
Have you played Arx Fatalis? How comparable is it that system?

EDIT: Silva: Aren't all these games so much better than western games because they are all grimdark games and grimdark is the best theme?
virgil wrote:Or is this some kind of elaborate plot to talk about Bear World?
Image
silva wrote:By the way, is it possible to replicate on the tabletop environment the kind of experience videogames like these provide ? Hmmm...
Well that was predictable.
Last edited by Kaelik on Wed Nov 11, 2015 11:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Post by Longes »

It's pretty similar.

The best way to describe The Void is "Survival horror dating sim where almost everyone is against you".
Last edited by Longes on Wed Nov 11, 2015 11:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by silva »

Im at day 5 in Pathologic and the inevitable comparison already popped in my head: how does it fare against Planescape Torment, the other dialogue-driven mesmerizing macabre unconventional game I love ?


My impression so far is that Pathologic is clearly the better game, because differently from PS where the mechanics (aka: Combat) do not speak to it's core elements (aka: the dialogues full of moral and existential dilemmas), in Pathologic the survival mechanics not only speak to its core themes but reinforce them in a beautiful way. That said, I still find PS writing and dialogues more thought-provoking and memorable, so I would say its a draw so far.

Anyway, I hope to finish it by next week. Let's see how it goes.
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
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Post by virgil »

Kaelik wrote:
virgil wrote:Or is this some kind of elaborate plot to talk about Bear World?
Image
silva wrote:By the way, is it possible to replicate on the tabletop environment the kind of experience videogames like these provide ? Hmmm...
Well that was predictable.
Kind of disappointing how predictable, really. The other hint was the fact he made this thread on the RPG subforum rather than the video game one.
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Post by Leress »

silva wrote:Thanks for the info, people. GreatGreyShrike' post actually sold me on the game. I'll try to find it on Steam.
Here it is at GOG

http://www.gog.com/game/void_the

It might go on sale soon since the big Fall sale is going on right now.
Koumei wrote:I'm just glad that Jill Stein stayed true to her homeopathic principles by trying to win with .2% of the vote. She just hasn't diluted it enough!
Koumei wrote:I am disappointed in Santorum: he should carry his dead election campaign to term!
Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.
I want him to tongue-punch my box.
]
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Post by Wulfbanes »

75% off right away. What a prediction. :roundnround:
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Post by Grek »

Kaelik wrote:EDIT: Silva: Aren't all these games so much better than western games because they are all grimdark games and grimdark is the best theme?
The Void is less grimdark and more acidtrip. You play as a featureless humanoid form exploring a greyscale dreamworld landscape in search of sources of floating spiritual paint with which to colour in the world. You cast spells by smearing paint on people. Monsters roam around trying to eat the paint and you have to fight them off. Very metaphorical and shit.
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Post by silva »

Reading some Fallout 4 reviews and first-impressions and it touches the exact points we are talking here: a commercial game designed by committee to appeal to the masses and grant a 20 million revenue. Game is too easy, too shallow (there are not even skills this time), combat-focused with coolz effects and explosions and hordes of moots, and the plot is simplistic and sterilized, not touching any extreme/controvertial/realistic theme that could plausibly surface in the proposed environment.

In other words, exactly what Blade explained here:
Blade wrote:Money and culture, but mostly money.

Eastern European developers have lower development costs low. Most of them started as small teams they have lower wages compared to US developers and they're not afraid of cutting corners (many eastern european games are often quite shoddy on release, and QC is often abysmally low)

In the US, to get the money you'll need to sign with one of the big editor. And this means getting the oversight of the editor for everything. Generally speaking it means reducing your game to a consensual product that's similar enough to another one that's selling well.

In Europe, you first have the chance that you can have publishers who'll publish out of love of the art rather than just for the money. That's why you get all these weird artsy European movies that keeps getting theater releases even when they're not guaranteed to make much money.

And even when they're in it for the money, they don't have the weight of the big US publishers. Nor do they have the guarantee to get 100 companies ready to develop the next Call of Honor for each potentially interesting game they reject.

I guess culture also plays a role. In US, everyone from developers to publishers are fine with entertainment. In Europe, it's more about Art. But the indie community shows that US game developers can also make game with outstanding flavor and deep themes if they don't get a publisher telling them that they need more and bigger boobs, more explosions and a simpler "good vs evil" story.
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
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Post by Longes »

Game is too easy
Maybe I just suck at Fallout, but I didn't feel like it was too easy.
too shallow (there are not even skills this time)
The skill system of Fallout 3 was garbage in dire need of reworking. Now, the perk system being both crafting gate and fun stuff like Bloody Mess and Mysterious Stranger sucks, but I still think it's better than what we had before.

What blew my mind the most is that Sole Survivor can build water purifiers. No one even mentions or acknowledges that fact. Remember how in Fallout 3 the capital wasteland was in uproar because a guy invented a water purifier? Well Sole Survivor can just build those. In a cave, with a box of scraps.
Last edited by Longes on Thu Nov 12, 2015 11:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

1) The game isn't too easy. I mean, it is easy as fuck, because I am a master of teh video games, and I have an optimized perk set up and make the best guns and play with stealth, but complaining that the game is too easy is silly, if you play the game well, it should be easy, it is just that the "skill" in fallout 4 is not twitch shooting (even if it tries to trick you into thinking it is) but is instead in understanding level design, optimized looting, and building your character right. It is still an RPG, so just like 70% of being "skilled" at level 1 D&D is writing "Int 20 Tinker Gnome Wizard with Color Spray in all First level slots and Silent Image in all cantrip slots" so with fallout character build decisions when done right are supposed to make playing the game easier.

2) Being "combat focused" does not make a game shallow or bad. Fallout 4 isn't even "combat focused" there is just as much if not more exploration focus, and building focus as at least more than the last two fallout games and probably more than any previous fallout game. There is as much dialogue focus, but people probably just memory whole it away because the dialogue is basically just cutscenes and shit. See 3. But in total the game isn't any more combat focused than the old ones.

3) The dialogue system is, and I cannot stress this enough, complete shit. Over and above the fact that limited choices choose one mechanic is stupid on it's face compared to a list, say what you want system. The dialogue tree isn't even a tree. No matter what you do or say, all four options result in the exact same fucking thing. Like, an obvious dialogue tree would have looked like: Choose one of ABCD if A choose EFGH if B choose IJKL, ect. But since that would require them to pay voice actors for tons more fucking dialogue than they apparently wanted to, instead you choose ABCD, and then there are four different dialogues that all present you with the same choice, EFGH. So since you get to the next place no matter what you say, FUCK YOU YOUR CHOICE DOESN'T MATTER. The dialogue system is objectively shit and objectively made more shitty by the fact that they hired voice actors. That is a real problem with the game and it is goddam terrible. However, and this is my point about silva doesn't know what the fuck he is talking about: this system is the same one used in all kinds of indie games that are "evoke such distinct flavors and themes" Undertale doesn't even let you make dialogue choices at all, you basically choose "kill or not kill" against every enemy, but it evokes distinct flavors and themes because movies learned how to evoke distinct flavors and themes 100 years ago. Plays learned how to do it 1000 years ago. Cutscenes can just do that. If Fallout doesn't do it with it's cutscenes (which is not a point I actually believe based on what I have played so far) then it is because fallout 4 doesn't do that, not because the design of a game with cutscenes instead of free flowing dialogue choices makes it harder to evoke themes and flavor.

4) The skill system in fallout 3 had some problems. One sort of problem was that your first X levels where spent maxing the skill associated with whatever gun type you were going to use, and fuck everything else. And then the next Y levels was spent maxxing repair, and then probably speech or sneak, and then you had about 10 different viable choices but you were already level 10-15. That is sort of a problem, because it meant you basically did not make decisions at the beginning of the game. But the level Fallout 4 perk/special system has it's own problems. The first problem is that the fact that perks are gated by special stats and level means that at a certain point, how fast depending on what type of character you make, you are going to end with a 10 in all stats. That means that your initial decision of special stats was just a short term decision, and in the end won't define your character. That is annoying and completely in contravention to what the special system has always thematically been (my stats are what make me special, no two people are the same everyone is unique, you can uniquely have all 10s, or you can uniquely have all 10s). The second major problem is that the perks are all heavily level gated. So you basically get one rank in a perk, and then have to wait between 10-25 levels before you can get the next rank. This "Helps" in that it doesn't give you no choice but to put 5 straight points into whichever weapon type you decide to use, and then three into gun nut and three into armor, and only then make choices. But it hurts in that you feel like you aren't making choices at all, because you end up filling out one or two ranks in about 10 perks before you even get to make additional choices. I should be able to choose to be a specialist crafter and max that before level 39. Why would I have to wait till I have spent 38 other perks before getting my 4th crafting rank? I think the system would be a lot better if the secondary ranks where not as level limited. Like, imagine a league of legends system where your max ranks in a perk was capped at some number by your character level, but past level 10-15 you could choose to max most perks, if not all. Honestly, I'm not sure what possible purpose there is in holding off powered by sun 3 or adamntium skeleton 4 or grim reaper 3 until level 50. Is an additional 10% chance of action point refresh actually broken at level 20? Really? In comparison to additional damage on your weapon, sneak chance, additional sa crit damage, additional crit damage, crafting to get you better weapons, or lockpicking or hacking, ect. You are making choices under the current system, but for fucks sake you don't feel like it, you feel like you are "choosing" to have one rank in everything that is even vaguely related to you your character and then to take the second rank in whatever becomes unlocked at this level according to the designers intended level cap decisions.

I think a good first mod is some huge fuck of modification to the level caps. The easiest is just: "There are no level caps, and every level 5 character has double damage in their weapon of choice and every level 12 character is a master craftsman" but there is probably a better version that lets you max out solar powered at level 10 if you can and want to, but slightly modifies damage perks to be the only real level capped ones, and sets the last level cap end at level 15-20.

5) Water purification in Fallout 3 was inventing a device that purified all water everywhere in the wasteland via magic, so that people could drink from rivers and the ocean without rads (and apparently, without salt poisoning?) and could use it to farm crops without it radiating the crops.

The water purifies in 4 are just electric powered boilers (seriously, walk to a cooking station and boil all your dirty waters) that make purified water for your people to drink.
Last edited by Kaelik on Thu Nov 12, 2015 1:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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