General gaming discussion

Mr Crispy · 27-02-2022 12:17am

Valve have a new "game" out on Tuesday - Aperture Desk Job. It's short, free, and created for the Steam Deck (but can be played on PC with a controller).

Aperture Desk Job reimagines the been-there-done-that genre of walking simulators and puts them in the lightning-spanked, endorphin-gorged world of sitting still behind things.

You play as an entry-level nobody on their first day at work — your heart full of hope and your legs full of dreams, eager to climb that corporate ladder. But life’s got other plans, and they all involve chairs.

Designed as a free playable short for Valve’s new Steam Deck, Desk Job walks you through the handheld’s controls and features, while not being nearly as boring as that sounds.

Not Portal 3!

Lower your expectations: This is not a sequel to Portal. Now get ready to raise them slightly, because it is in the expanded universe of those games. Desk Job puts you squarely in the driver’s seat at Aperture Science. Then quickly removes the driving part and adds a desk in front of the seat.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1902490/Aperture_Desk_Job/

Potential-Monke · 27-02-2022 10:58pm

Valve's Playroom?

CiDeRmAn · 01-03-2022 2:07pm

It looks like the new Horizon game is cursed with poor timing once again.

The previous game was swamped out by Breath of the Wild, and now its sequel is up against Elden Ring.

My in-residence Souls/Bloodborne player, aka my son, assures me Elden Ring is incredible, so I take him at his word

Retr0gamer · 01-03-2022 2:16pm

Maybe guerilla could make a game that isn't so safe next time? Or a better game.

recyclops · 01-03-2022 2:18pm

The worst part is after this all I can predict for horizon when I give it a go is that its going to fell like a giant step backwards, It will look great at least

_CreeD_ · 01-03-2022 4:32pm

Horizon FW is fantastic, a step forward in every way from an already great game.

ERG89 · 01-03-2022 5:35pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118714653#Comment_118714653

It doesn't really change anything about open world games or what the studio has done which is something Dying Light 2 & Elden Ring are also guilty of aswell. They do have new mechanics but nothing new to the genre which at this stage is needed, open world games are at tbe threshold WW2 shooters were 17/18 years ago.

They are all a bit buggier than you'd expect but that is more a sign of the times with covid and also they had to release when they did.

_CreeD_ · 02-03-2022 4:08pm

You mean optimisation versus innovation. I think with the maturity of the genre that's to be expected, there's a point where the major opportunities for innovation have already been exploited to some extent so further work appears as just optimising and to me that is still moving forward. BoTW is touted over and over again as some panacea of open world gaming 'done right' and yet every argument in the last few months (of which there are WAY too many on here) boils down to something like 'well it doesn't have map markers' O_o . It also depends how far back and how much reduction you want to do in classifying genres and evolution, which in hindsight seems like huge leaps at certain points but in reality is usually just iterative changes over time.

02-03-2022 4:33pm

I think games evolve slowly, there's rarely any paradigm shifts.

Retr0gamer · 02-03-2022 4:37pm

Yep there's very few true originals. It's rarely about who did it first but more who did it well first. Like Halo's rechargeable health. It was in JP: Trepasser and faceball 2000 but Halo made it complement it's gameplay flow.

Same with BotW. It still has a lot of Ubisoft open world hang overs but the simple change of making it more exploration focused than icon hunting elevates it and makes it a very different experience.

johnny_ultimate · 02-03-2022 4:43pm

I’ve played around the same amount of time in Horizon FW and Elden Ring now. I VASTLY prefer Elden Ring’s design philosophy.

Horizon’s grand (pretty good, even!), but there are few surprises. It’s very much ‘checklist’ gameplay - clearly labelled content, where you go to the place and do the predictable thing. Sure you might find an unexpected enemy or cutscene here or there, but it’s just a pretty good (and very technically accomplished) version of almost every open world game. There’s nice little discrete puzzle spaces, but they’re also very similar to every other modern AAA game with near automated platforming and very simple box pulling puzzles. It loaded with simplistic loot and exp systems that add lots of noise and busywork to the experience. It’s a decent game, but innovative it’s not - just a refinement of the previous game with better graphics.

Elden Ring, in contrast, is all about surprise and exploration. It’s deeper than ‘no map markers’. It’s about finding a place randomly while exploring, pulling an innocuous lever, and discovering an entire new dimension and depth to the game you weren’t expecting. It’s about finding out how the world ticks, what weird surprises it houses, and how to take advantage of the complex systems the game only briefly introduces. It’s a game that trusts you to find its secrets on your own terms, with only the gentlest of guidance towards the ‘critical path’. Even the dedicated, story-essential, more ‘linear’ dungeons are rewarding feats of vast, complex level design.

Don’t get me wrong: Elden Ring is a Souls game, with many familiar elements built up over a half dozen other games. It’s not as experimental as BotW was with its incredible physics-based playground. It’s hardly a completely new or endlessly innovative experience. But it’s a game of frequent surprise and wonder, where the open world really is a place packed with cool secrets to unravel. Horizon is good fun and I’ll go back to play more when I’m done with Elden Ring… but it’s merely a solid take on a formula that’s been done countless times before by many studios.

02-03-2022 4:51pm

For my personal taste, one example of a test of whether an open world game is great is if it's fun/interesting to just roam around and ignore the quests for a few hours. Where you create your own story just through exploration.

That's what I mostly do in these types of games, I just head off and do my own thing.

It sounds like Elden Ring nails that.

Retr0gamer · 02-03-2022 5:13pm

I think Elden Ring also nails the rewards for exploring. And by nails I mean blows everything else out of the water. Your reward for finding some random cave or place of interest is usually a well designed mini dungeon with a boss that ranges from fun to 'OMFG is that a dragon out of nowhere!'. In a standard ubi formula game you get a fetch quest and said fetch quests are clearly marked on the world map rather than you having to actually actively discover them. Nothing out there, not even BotW matches the reward in content you get out of exploring in Elden Ring.

Stone Deaf 4evr · 02-03-2022 5:36pm

Elden ring has genuine stakes to exploring, you've made it all the way through the dungeon or cave, used up a lot of your flasks, and oh look, here's a tougher enemy who's likely guarding the final reward, And its not till you start the encounter, do you have any idea of what you're facing, and managing to best it first go is a real moment of triumph.

johnny_ultimate · 02-03-2022 5:50pm

Loot is definitely a problem in Horizon, albeit that’s also the case with many other modern AAA games. The game is full of chests loaded with actual junk as that’s the main crafting currency. There’s rarely a sense of surprise or discovery, except for mandatory story items or the most involved side content. And the game’s so visually dense you have to rely on detective vision to even see the items some times 😅

recyclops · 02-03-2022 6:02pm

Is horizon like the latest tomb raider with the detective vision where you end up just mashing L3 to constantly scan and all you really see is flowers you can pick all over the place?

I am sure I will pick it up eventually but as stated previously all I can predict is it will feel like a step backwards a giant world that is filled with markers that I will feel the need to go to to see what "reward" is there.

I am finding with Elden there is no need to go to a marker there is a wonder in checking out something I see in the world and actively listening to what NPCS and stuff I find are telling me. Sure there was something so obvious in one quest where and NPC asked me to find something and return it to him, I had never heard of the thing but sure enough when I managed to get a spare one I really wanted to go back and give it to them.

Now he is off and telling me where to meet him, its not marked on the map and I have no idea where he will be but I do have a general idea of where he will be and that will now kick off a fair few hours of exploring where I more than likely will end up finding countless other stuff.

Penn · 02-03-2022 6:03pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118721147#Comment_118721147

I keep going to press R3 in Elden Ring to highlight things to collect or see enemies through walls.

Imagine that... an open world game where you can't just press a button to see enemies through walls... What mad b*stard came up with that idea?!

johnny_ultimate · 02-03-2022 6:28pm

There were a few times in Horizon where the graphics were so lush it actually made the important stuff on screen hard to read!

I hate ‘detective modes’ in game in general - just forces the player into bad habits, and games mostly use it as a crutch rather than a design feature (and I don’t count ‘highlight the footsteps’ as a particularly nuanced design feature). The one thing in Horizon’s favour at least is that detective mode isn’t quite as intrusive visually - it’s somewhat more elegantly worked into the world.

Retr0gamer · 02-03-2022 6:53pm

I love how horizon 2 attempted to fix the issue with the yellow hand holds. There's none in the game now but you have to use detective vision now to highlight them in yellow.

They've just abstracted the process with an added extra button press 🙄

02-03-2022 7:08pm

I think there's a place for a character to have "senses" in a game, just to give that extra connection to the player, a little added immersion.

But I don't know if I have ever seen it properly implemented. It should be more subtle, whereas any game I've seen that used it just overused it.

wotzgoingon · 02-03-2022 7:21pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118721659#Comment_118721659

I found Watch Dogs Legion's detective mode or what ever they called it really bad. I had just replayed Watch Dogs 2 before I started it and you could turn it on infinitively in that game but in Legion it only stayed on for a split second. Took a few mins to get used to it especially after just playing 2.

Retr0gamer · 02-03-2022 7:25pm

In it's defense it's a great thing for gamers with disabilities.

Potential-Monke · 02-03-2022 11:34pm

I dunno, IRL i'm just me, but in gaming I'm taking on a persona, a person who already is skilled in things I'm not. These "sense" things, to me, are to ensure I can do what the character has. Yes, some games don't implement it right, but until games can figure out how to make everything interactable or somehow make the not obvious obvious without highlighting it... It's needed. Arkham games for example, I'm no detective, so that was needed, imo, to make me feel like Batman. And it did, but mostly because of the excellent combat.

Again, it comes down to preference. I like these things because it allows me to not waste time in general. I appreciate some people prefer the exploration side of doing this, but I like to play a game and move on to the next one. I want many experiences with a lot of variety, so sticking with games for longer than necessary is not for me. Dying Light 2 for example right now, it's massive with a lot to do, and if you enjoy the game and enjoy spending ages doing everything, it's right up your street. But I'm now ploughing through the main story, because I want to move on to Horizon, or Cyberpunk, maybe even Elden Ring just so I can say I tried it (but I'll be honest, reading the ER thread makes me fairly certain I'd like it except for the combat, lack of journal to show what you've done, not what you need to do, and the requirement to die a lot until you git gud). Only exceptions are usually online MP, used to be CoD, is now Rocket League. But the nature of them is different.

_CreeD_ · 03-03-2022 3:13am

The yellow markers in Horizon FW on terrain are actually an improvement. You can ignore them and climb as normal in the open world, what they represent there is a guaranteed route rather than one you need to work out visually that you activate if desired (or turn on perpetually in settings). In the mission or puzzle based climbing sections you do have the usual loud yellow handholds and similar markers which defeats the purpose of trying to work the route out but tbh without them they'd be very frustrating as some of those jumps and handholds would be near impossible to judge visually (which is an issue in itself, everything should run on the same set of rules, even terrain).

Anyway just finished it out with I think 90% at least of the side missions done but very little time spent on the Hunting grounds, Arena or any Strike games. They were just too linear and boring imho compared to the main game loop. It's a better game than the first but I think I preferred the original's story overall. Still a really enjoyable 70 hours or so. Looking forward to playing it again on a PC or PS5 Pro version in a few years to see it in proper 4k.

Penn · 03-03-2022 7:49am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118721576#Comment_118721576

In fairness though it is quite a good solution, particularly in mountainous/rocky areas. It means they don't have to have defined climbing routes with the hand holds, which means you can climb almost everything, and if you find you can't climb something you can use the focus to highlight where you can climb.

So much of Horizon 1 was spent trying to run around mountains or repeatedly jumping to try and get up steep inclines. It was always a real pain. Vertical traversal has now become much, much easier, without having to have physical yellow hand holds everywhere.

Penn · 03-03-2022 7:55am

I think the trouble with some detective mode type things is they become a crutch, and you end up barely being able to step into a room without using it to scan the area before taking a step.

Even the Arkham games, as they went on they had to introduce jammers and scanners that would alert enemies to your position if you used it, meaning you had to try take out those to safely use your detective mode.

pixelburp · 03-03-2022 8:30am

Did someone say map markers?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118723912#Comment_118723912

Agree; as you say the Arkham games were quite bad for that... until I hit those areas I must have spent a significant percentage of the game permanently in detective mode - cos why wouldn't you?

Penn · 03-03-2022 10:17am

Yeah, any stealth areas in the Arkham games I would just be near permanently in detective mode. Likewise the last few Assassin's Creed games you'd spend ages using your eagle to tag every enemy in a fort etc before you get near it. Or The Last Of Us just constantly using the hearing mode to track enemies. Which means it's also always a pain in the hole when you use hearing mode, don't see anything, go around a corner and are suddenly attacked by an enemy the hearing mode should have seen but because it's a scripted moment, they didn't show up in it.

I can definitely see the benefits those types of systems have, but often times they become a crutch, are implemented haphazardly, or just become more of a hindrence. In Horizon 2 there are some underwater areas you have to try find specific loot, but because the loot itself is light green, it shows up as light purple in focus mode, and the underwater area looks extremely blue, so the things you're looking for are next to impossible to distinguish.

recyclops · 03-03-2022 10:33am

You kind of forget how dependent games are with it nowadays especially open world games, in a few years they will be like QTE which we have all grown to hate.

johnny_ultimate · 03-03-2022 10:54am

Far from saving time, I tend to find detective modes actually waste the player’s time by highlighting every little trinket and piece of junk that can be collected. Horizon’s a particularly bad offender for this - a battlefield is littered with stuff after a fight, so you’re encouraged to trawl through it all. But the rewards / loot are never as rewarding as surprising as what you might get after finishing an Elden Ring fight.

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