The Game Venting Thread

[Kapol]

It's really annoying how Nintendo is handling the entire Amiibo situation. They didn't release a lot of supply of certain characters. Which I understand honestly. But they started to sell out pretty quickly. If that's because Amiibos as a whole were much more popular than the expected, if people were speculating on the low-stock figures, or if those figures were just more popular than they thought would be the case, I don't know. But it's lead to certain characters being nigh-impossible to find without a major price increase (some are going for up to $50).

The worst part is that this has also lead to new ones selling out super quick due to collectors needing to snap them up, and price-gougers grabbing them to sell them when the price goes up from low supply. The one figure I want, Lucario, is sold out at the place it's exclusively available. It isn't coming out for over two months. Little Mac just came out a couple weeks ago. I checked 8 stores in town to find one for my friend, who REALLY wants one. There wasn't a single one left.

Low supply wouldn't honestly bother me that much if Nintendo just came out and said they were reprinting them. But they've been super unclear about what they're doing. They said they're already discontinuing some. But they don't say which. They don't make it clear if and when any other figures than the super popular ones they've overstocked are going to come out. This is what lead to speculators buying up the smaller print ones, and making it nigh-impossible to find them. This seems to only apply to the US though from what I've read.

[Bebop Man]

I think it's a deliberate case of forcefully creating demand.

I know Nintendo (and Japan) has a history of "No export for you!" (cf. TvTropes), but still.

[Kapol]

I think you're right. I just don't know if the demand was created by Nintendo, or by an outside party.

[JackSlack]

Y'know, I didn't expect to like Dragon Age: Inquisition, just because I knew it could have been so much more. (Like, I dunno, a game that actually explored the Mage/Templar divide that the previous game set it up to be, instead of bullshit demons.)

I didn't expect to really despise the thing as a tiresome busywork simulator that actively tries to pull you AWAY from its own story with endless tiresome quests utterly disconnected from the narrative. It's ... awful. It's stunningly awful.

[JackSlack]

Oh my god. And my save file corrupted after I was killed by bears.

Fuck. This. Game.

Edit: And it's bugged, locking me out from a romance option! Joy of joys!

Seriously, fuck this game. I hate it so much.

[Duckay]

I had a perplexing bug when I first started playing, where nothing happened and I just spawned on an empty mountain. That was weird. But I haven't faced any other bugs in the game yet. It's just mildly obnoxious that my computer is old so the game runs a bit slow.

[empath]

Welp, wife got me AC4-Black Flag on Steam for xmas...

...and, I'm actually ashamed to say that Uplay was painless for me; it still remembered my password from years ago, and installed quickly and correctly when I tried to start up thru Steam, it accepted the CD-Keys for the game and its DLC without complaint, and then ran the game quickly and quietly.

So now I feel I'm 'betraying' those who have had much more trouble with the platform (including Past Me)...

[ANeMzero]

Welp, wife got me AC4-Black Flag on Steam for xmas...

...and, I'm actually ashamed to say that Uplay was painless for me; it still remembered my password from years ago, and installed quickly and correctly when I tried to start up thru Steam, it accepted the CD-Keys for the game and its DLC without complaint, and then ran the game quickly and quietly.

The real insidious evil of Uplay is just how inconsistent it is. I received uplay codes for AC4 and Splinter Cell Blacklist with my most recent graphics card. AC4 was utterly painless, exactly as you described. Blacklist on the other hand was a god damned nightmare. Apparently the ease of use for AC4 was purely to lure me into a false sense of security so it could sucker punch me.

Steam is a good way to also bypass some of the more troublesome aspects of Uplay; ubisofts client isn't great at patching, so having Steam handle it all makes things more bearable.

[MinniChi]

Steam sale! My poor, poor wallet. I am so glad it is over now.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

My bad laptop safe guarded my wallet. All I bought was:
Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 and 2 and Fallout New Vegas.

[empath]

Good taste, good sir.

I am well-vaccinated against Steam's sales thanks to binging massively over the past few years (and also the inoculation of more Humble Bundles than I care to remember); the industry hasn't made enough games that appeal to me for there to be more than one or two titles discounted on any given sale that I would end up breaking the bank...

[Jamfalcon]

Yeah, same here. My first sale ended with me owning at least eight games, and a couple after that were similar, but it steadily decreased, to the point where now I'll maybe buy one or two. Most often because I say "well, I might like this game, but I have over a dozen in my backlog already, so I can wait for it to go on sale again."

Made it out this time with just Dark Souls 2, which I've been waiting to drop below $20 since it came out.

[Deedles]

This was one of the first sales where I really had some money to spend so I came out with Valiant Hearts, Papers Please, Shovel Knight, Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons, Child of Light, Bastion, LIMBO, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Shadow Warrior, Skyrim(finally) and A Wolf Among Us.

I also got a few of other games gifted to me, like Binding of Isaac, Walking Dead, Evoland and Final Fantasy XIII-2. So, I'm set for games for quite a while!

[Kapol]

It's always weird during a Steam Sale to be like 'man, I should pick up this game. It looks fun.' And then find out that I already actually own it.

This year I picked up quite a few myself. More than I should have for sure.

[RedNightmare]

Very good list there Deedles!

I got away with a few games: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Shadow Warrior, Saints Row IV, This War of Mine, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West & System Shock 2 (long overdue).

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Bought RCT1 & 2 again during the Steam Sale.
Nice nostalgia and fun money management.

Just one flaw which I forgot.
The waiting game.

When there is nothing new to build.
Nothing to optimise (paths/patrols of staff/bins/benches/food stalls etc.)
etc.
All you can do is wait. It is boring.
It's nice seeing pretty colours move on the screen. But I am not 14 anymore. I feel like every second I spend should be productive.
Feels wrong that I can turn and read a book as a wait for a new thing to research/win the level/some catastrophe happens to respond to.

What's also bad is when you end up raking in £5k a month, you have a pool of £20k and you have nothing new to spend the money on or space to build anything. You do have space, in a way, vertically. But then you park starts looking messy.

It's fun, just you can't really burn through it. I lose interest after 1 year of gameplay due to the waiting game. RCT3 had fast forward, and faster forwards...

[Kapol]

My local Toys R Us broke street date for their exclusive Amiibo, Lucario. This is really frustrating for me. He's the one I wanted due to being my main. Now I'll have to drive make an hour and a half trip on top of the hour and a half trip I'd have to have made anyways to even have a chance at getting one.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Follow up on my vent.

RCT2 seems faster paced than 1. I don't know why. I was able to play through 3 years this afternoon and not get bored.

Either time passes quicker or there's more (satisfying) things to do.

Cash Machines make a huge difference. Guests will leave the park when they're pissed off, as opposed to broke.

[Bebop Man]

My local Toys R Us broke street date for their exclusive Amiibo, Lucario. This is really frustrating for me. He's the one I wanted due to being my main. Now I'll have to drive make an hour and a half trip on top of the hour and a half trip I'd have to have made anyways to even have a chance at getting one.

Do they make that much difference from a gameplay perspective or is it mostly a collector's fetish?

[Kapol]

Well, they are nice little figures. But the big thing is that they function as an AI in Smash Bros. You get to basically raise them by training them, upping their stats with items and/or giving them abilities, and fight with or against them. You can also take them to other peoples' places to have them fight there (they get more experience from other peoples' consoles I believe). Outside of smash bros, they unlock various things in various games. Like some of them unlock costumes in Mario Kart 8.

There are a lot of people who keep them boxed up as collectables though. So it's a bit of both.

[Bebop Man]

Sounds like a pretty nifty concept to incorporate in a "proper" (i.e. not handheld) Pokemon game at some point.

[Kapol]

That's part of the reason I wanted to get a Lucario amiibo, in case they ever actually make a console Pokémon game. Honestly, they're just kind of nifty little things. I thought they were just kind of stupid when I heard about them. But I'm kind of impressed after playing with them. That's why I was frustrated in not being able to get my main.

Oh, which I should mention, I did make the 4 hour trip to try to get a Lucario amiibo. Still didn't get one. They were sold out within a half hour. :/

[Bebop Man]

Well, it's available in the UK if you order it off Amazon (17 pounds). Maybe you know somebody there that can buy it for you, then mail it?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nintendo-amiibo ... ds=lucario

[Kapol]

I think it'd be cheaper to just buy it on US Amazon or ebay. It seems to be going for about $30 after shipping. But I'm waiting to see what happens with general stock at this point. I'm not really willing to pay that much (over twice the MSRP) for something I don't need at this point. It's just been a bigger pain than I feel it should have been. It's only in the US (or NA, I'm not sure) that it was a store exclusive.

[empath]

Oh, so you want me to go on a breakneck, hair-raising parkour chase after this guy to kill him? Well, why did you give me a gun and an open line of sight at the start of this rooftop obstacle course? Yeah, and because your game engine was designed for p.o.s. consoles with their crippled controllers, you provided plenty of auto-aim lockon functionality AND I'm equipping the most accurate handgun in your game, and my hud says I've got a perfect shot at his back as he runs for the first jump...

...and every time I try this, the bullet magically misses.

Seriously, this horseshit is worse than Alex's justified ranting at an obviously flat texture masquerading as a 3d, operable physics object, aka #NotADoor.

If you don't WANT me to shoot him, write a simple reason for me to not get that clear shot at the start; have a tiny cutscene where my character tries to draw but the gun gets caught in the holster, or any number of distractions or whatnot make me drop the gun (and probably pick it up again before giving chase, but not fast enough to get off the shot).

...or even just DISABLE ALL THAT 'yep, that's a good shot' shit in your HUD that tells me to shoot?!? Just make his object untargetable until I get to the climactic end of the chase. Just have that IFF feature on my sights not light up when they pass over him. Easy peasy.

But don't MISLEAD ME LIKE THIS. It annoys and puts your laziness in tying up loose ends into clear view.

(FWIW, I did jump through the fucking hoops and run the scumbag down - took five or six attempts because I'm old and slow and platforming isn't my forte)