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Arkane Deathloop - first-person action game from Arkane set on a time loop island

LarryTyphoid

Scholar
Joined
Sep 16, 2021
Messages
2,233
I still have yet to play Arx, disappointing to hear that it also has bad movement. They kept trying to reinvent the FPP wheel and kept ending up with games that control worse than Ultima Underworld or System Shock. Talk about the lack of mouselook all day but those games don't have the jerky movement of early Arkane or the context-sensitive animations of modern Arkane (and every other modern first person game). The Dark Engine just might have been the absolute peak of first person design for the reasons you put out.

Looking at Deathloop gameplay, Arkane is still going for the Dishonored 2 brand of "invisible body but loads of faggy animations". I don't know who convinced these devs that this shit was "immersive". And they still have that HORRIBLE, GODAWFUL vignette whenever you crouch. I don't recall anyone ever mentioning it in its thread but Dishonored 2 having that terrible vignette and not letting you disable it puts that game straight into the garbage for me.
 

Immortal

Arcane
In My Safe Space
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5,062
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Safe Space - Don't Bulli
RoSoDude Question, since your opinion seems to be quite :obviously: around here.

Have you experienced or ever found first person combat that you genuinely enjoyed or found engaging / well design?
The question is mainly targeted at Melee combat over shooting (FPS).


Follow up - Would you consider Kingdom Come: Deliverance well done or needlessly gamey and complex?

EDIT
Based on the above post, I would assume Dying Light was considered well done by you.. but does that translate beyond killing hoards of zombies?
 

Butter

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
7,523
I still have yet to play Arx, disappointing to hear that it also has bad movement. They kept trying to reinvent the FPP wheel and kept ending up with games that control worse than Ultima Underworld or System Shock. Talk about the lack of mouselook all day but those games don't have the jerky movement of early Arkane or the context-sensitive animations of modern Arkane (and every other modern first person game). The Dark Engine just might have been the absolute peak of first person design for the reasons you put out.

Looking at Deathloop gameplay, Arkane is still going for the Dishonored 2 brand of "invisible body but loads of faggy animations". I don't know who convinced these devs that this shit was "immersive". And they still have that HORRIBLE, GODAWFUL vignette whenever you crouch. I don't recall anyone ever mentioning it in its thread but Dishonored 2 having that terrible vignette and not letting you disable it puts that game straight into the garbage for me.
That vignette made me immediately stop playing Dishonored 2, but someone linked a mod that removes it.

https://www.nexusmods.com/dishonored2/mods/2
 

LarryTyphoid

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That vignette made me immediately stop playing Dishonored 2, but someone linked a mod that removes it.

https://www.nexusmods.com/dishonored2/mods/2
I saw that mod, but I continued to play without it because the retarded devs should have put it in the game. If they're not going to implement something so simple then that must be their intended experience, and who am I to question the paragons of game design perfection over at Arkane Studios?

I even saw some tard on the Steam forums saying "without the vignette you wouldn't know you were crouching!" as if the change in perspective and the weapons being held differently isn't enough for the player's tiny pea brain. All in all, I'm pretty glad I didn't pay for DH2.
 

Lutte

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LbReXUR.jpg

+
L4ea5KK.jpg

(dishonored 1 is separated into two builds in steam, RHCP is the russian/slavic/mongoloid region.)
ZUxGdYR.jpg

U6hwJkh.jpg


eQZSlZG.jpg


wew lads, it's defo not gonna peak as high as the other games. Only death of the outsider did worse. Consider the heavily marketed multiplayer aspect DoA, reviewers are already saying it's hard to invade and the player base is going to dwindle to nothing soon.
 

SharkClub

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Strap Yourselves In
Lmao the pvp is cancerous as fuck. I just got invaded by some Siberian with 800 ping who unironically had an XxXnameXxX warping around and getting the instakill backstab animation on me. They literally just run at you spamming blink and going for drop attacks with the machete and that's it. I unironically lost even though I had 3 lives and they had 1, and all three of the deaths were to melee. I'm guessing they can also heal using the shitloads of health pickups scattered all over the map as well? Either that or they had a regenerating health thing equipped because I definitely used enough ammo and got enough hitmarkers to kill him like twice over.

Was this Arkane's plan? Make the normal game stupid easy and rely on retarded peer2peer with slavs and brazilians to slot in a massive player-based difficulty spike in the middle of the level?
 
Joined
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Ash
Lmao the pvp is cancerous as fuck. I just got invaded by some Siberian with 800 ping who unironically had an XxXnameXxX warping around and getting the instakill backstab animation on me. They literally just run at you spamming blink and going for drop attacks with the machete and that's it. I unironically lost even though I had 3 lives and they had 1, and all three of the deaths were to melee. I'm guessing they can also heal using the shitloads of health pickups scattered all over the map as well? Either that or they had a regenerating health thing equipped because I definitely used enough ammo and got enough hitmarkers to kill him like twice over.

Was this Arkane's plan? Make the normal game stupid easy and rely on retarded peer2peer with slavs and brazilians to slot in a massive player-based difficulty spike in the middle of the level?

It's pretty clear that the invasion aspect wasn't given much attention, and should have been scrapped pretty early in development. If Immortal is correct that due to connectivity/latency issues the blink+machete combo is the only viable Julianna playstyle currently then it excuses the invaders somewhat, but certainly not Arkane. I find it hard to believe that they were unaware of its flaws during internal playtesting.
 

orcinator

Liturgist
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Jan 23, 2016
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1,704
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Republic of Kongou
Lmao the pvp is cancerous as fuck. I just got invaded by some Siberian with 800 ping who unironically had an XxXnameXxX warping around and getting the instakill backstab animation on me. They literally just run at you spamming blink and going for drop attacks with the machete and that's it. I unironically lost even though I had 3 lives and they had 1, and all three of the deaths were to melee. I'm guessing they can also heal using the shitloads of health pickups scattered all over the map as well? Either that or they had a regenerating health thing equipped because I definitely used enough ammo and got enough hitmarkers to kill him like twice over.

Was this Arkane's plan? Make the normal game stupid easy and rely on retarded peer2peer with slavs and brazilians to slot in a massive player-based difficulty spike in the middle of the level?

Arkane is so enamored with the idea of a player making their own difficulty(by abstaining from using any of the interesting mechanics) they're now relying on a second player to make their next game difficult.
Haha, I predicted the rising of the Sun!
 

SharkClub

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Strap Yourselves In
I've been playing some games as Julianna now and I'll say this, the invader being able to heal is extremely stupid. The whole "oh but colt has 3 lives" thing literally never actually comes into play with the balance of the encounter, because as soon as you kill him once he takes his time teleporting back a ways and you have all the time in the world to run off to an infinite heal station and back to your camping spot. It's three full health 1v1s where Julianna has the defender's advantage every time, and is almost entirely reliant on ping, not a 3v1.

There are some extremely questionable decisions for this asymmetric multiplayer that Arkane have made. You can turn your grenades into mines in this game so as Julianna your best bet is to place mines in retarded little overdetailed niches near doorways and corners, and once you've placed four of them you can go and pick up extras around the map. On one of the defense points there are like 10 npc mines lying around out in the open that you can just run up to and disarm and re-use them yourself. So you can stack like 14 mines around every corner, ledge, doorway, etc. and just play around them at the defense point. You can also pick up turrets as Julianna and place them wherever you like and there is one nearby that defense point. There is also an infinite health refill station inside that very same area that you can control.

So yeah, when you're not playing as Colt and being invaded by some 800 ping lag warper who teleports behind you and gets the machete backstab one shot, you can play as Julianna and either do some lag warp machete gameplay of your own or take part in some of the most horrendous abuse of PvE mines/turrets/npc allies of any game I've ever played. I've been playing like this as Julianna for like 10 matches now.

When I go back to continuing my singleplayer play through as Colt there is absolutely no way I'm playing with the online component turned on, I'll play single player vs easy as fuck AI Julianna rather than volunteering for contracting cancer.
 
Last edited:

LarryTyphoid

Scholar
Joined
Sep 16, 2021
Messages
2,233
Does this game actually have woke shit in it or was that just the vibe people got from the advertising? I feel like Synthetic Man would've pointed it out since he's typically vocal about that kind of thing. Even if it doesn't, I can't exactly blame people for thinking it'd be woke considering Arkane's track record. Although, the characters being black does fit the 1970s blaxplotation thing I've seen mentioned in this thread, as opposed to the tokenism you usually see from SJW devs.
 

SharkClub

Prophet
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Strap Yourselves In
Aside from that one "Eat the rich" thing in the pre order bonus advertising which is quite obviously tongue in cheek, I haven't noticed any actual wokeshit. To me, if anything, the game is anti-degeneracy because Colt is the only person trying to break the loop where all these hedonist scumbags do nothing but fuck, party, drink and eat candy. But yeah I'm not very far at all into the story with Colt so can't say for sure on that front.

A lot of people got upset purely because black people bad and the criticism of the game on that front has never been any deeper than that. But then all these sites giving it 10/10 on the other hand are likely influenced by prospective sjw points for saying black people good. People should be more critical of the games journalists rather than the game when it comes to anything like that.
 

LarryTyphoid

Scholar
Joined
Sep 16, 2021
Messages
2,233
So Deathloop's plot is about a black man's lone righteous crusade against the hair-hatted hooligans? Sounds pretty based. I wonder if Julianna gets into hair-yanking fights with other women at KFC.
 

RoSoDude

Arcane
Joined
Oct 1, 2016
Messages
727
RoSoDude Question, since your opinion seems to be quite :obviously: around here.

Have you experienced or ever found first person combat that you genuinely enjoyed or found engaging / well design?
The question is mainly targeted at Melee combat over shooting (FPS).


Follow up - Would you consider Kingdom Come: Deliverance well done or needlessly gamey and complex?

EDIT
Based on the above post, I would assume Dying Light was considered well done by you.. but does that translate beyond killing hoards of zombies?

Yeah, it's true that I am a big fan of Dying Light. It's a mashup of every AAA cliche of its time (open world, zombies, climbing, crafting, leveled loot, talent tree grinding) but executed in a coherent package that's actually rather good. The movement (which is mostly just auto-mantling on steroids) and combat mechanics (think Dark Messiah with more polish and more CQC moves) are the meat of why it's so entertaining, on top of the fact that the devs put actual effort into creating challenging gameplay scenarios and difficulty options that make the experience genuinely harder. The first-person melee is very satisfying, from camera movements to impact sounds to hit reactions, and you get a lot of contextual moves (dropkicks, slide kicks, grapple throw, running tackle, headstomp) that can be chained together in creative ways to dispatch enemies but also leave you vulnerable for the whole duration so it's not a total cheesefest like Dishonored. The world is a parkour + combat sandbox that affords you a lot of opportunities for creative kills, like kicking enemies into Dark Messiah spike walls or baiting them into electrical and fire traps, or simply dropkicking them off of rooftops. You will be killing hordes of zombies and the occasional raider, but the enemy roster is pretty good and poses a real threat. It is a very "gamey" game so if that bothers you, look elsewhere. I have a full critique of the game here if you want to know more of my thoughts.

So, that's my answer for best first-person melee, followed by Dark Messiah, followed by (and I shit you not) System Shock 2. It may be super basic, but the simulated wrench swings that can collide with enemy weapons and have to be timed with your movement to hit for stagger are actually quite good. Thief has the same melee combat (plus more player mechanics -- you can block and also swing from the right) but the enemies are fairly hard to read with some undodgeable BS attacks so as to discourage fightings, while SS2's enemies are better-tuned for CQC. Well, if you ask me they were a bit too easy and cheesable, which is why I made a mod to patch up their melee AI, and that process really made me appreciate the basic but solid melee mechanics in Dark.

I've not played Kingdom Come: Deliverance so I can't comment in much detail. The fundamentals seem pretty good (stamina system, lock-on with focus on aiming attack directions, various offensive and defensive maneuvers) but I don't know what depth is really there, how it interfaces with the RPG systems, etc. I haven't played Chivalry or Mordhau so I don't know much about those either.
 

Belegarsson

Think about hairy dwarfs all the time ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
wew lads, it's defo not gonna peak as high as the other games. Only death of the outsider did worse. Consider the heavily marketed multiplayer aspect DoA, reviewers are already saying it's hard to invade and the player base is going to dwindle to nothing soon.
The game released early in several regions and Steam's player tracker didn't count them, so it actually makes sense. Most games peaked in the first day or two in terms of CCU, and I can tell quite a lot of people refunded after experiencing (or hearing from others) bad performance.
 

Nifft Batuff

Prophet
Joined
Nov 14, 2018
Messages
3,169
Every normie loves soulslike/roguelikes games with boring endless "try it again from the start" loops. So I don't see the marketing target problem. Maybe these fans are too dumb to recognize their kins?

And I have a question: is there anyone here that has actually played this game?
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
Multiplayer stuff
And about single player? People are saying it takes in general 25hs to get all the visionaries in place to kill them on the four time slots, question is how boring those 25hs will be if you do 24hs of shooting braindead enemies and 1h of clue hunting? Does the adaptive difficulty eventually kick in or the difference it makes is negligible? It seems the biggest culprits are the way too generous detection timer, low enemy accuracy and poor peripheral vision, technically, those are numbers you place in variables that the game can tune up, the question is, does this ever happen?
 

Trithne

Erudite
Joined
Dec 3, 2008
Messages
1,191
So there's a silenced version of the SMG, and once you get and infuse that whatever challenge the game may have tried to present just goes out the window. This thing is stupidly accurate, I can snipe with it.

I also got the weird hybrid dual pistols/SMG weapon - which feels like it just doesn't have a place in this game. Maybe if you're going into everything guns blazing, sliding around and switching weapon every 15 seconds like a trailer.
 
Joined
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Messages
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So there's a silenced version of the SMG, and once you get and infuse that whatever challenge the game may have tried to present just goes out the window. This thing is stupidly accurate, I can snipe with it.

I also got the weird hybrid dual pistols/SMG weapon - which feels like it just doesn't have a place in this game. Maybe if you're going into everything guns blazing, sliding around and switching weapon every 15 seconds like a trailer.

Yeah the silenced SMG is the best gun I’ve found by far, and it’s not even unique.
 

copebot

Learned
Joined
Dec 27, 2020
Messages
387
Teleport-stabbing people is the best way to win Colt also, at least in close range. It's just the most consistent thing to do, and if you don't do it to them they do it to you.

The multiplayer is at its best when you don't actually fight, when it adds to the tension. I've had it happen where I had already killed a target and I just had to escape, so I evaded the guy, hacked the antenna that unlocks the exit, and made it out.

I had one funny match where the guy just had a great camping spot on top of the antenna with the sniper rifle. He 1-shotted me twice, then I managed to sneak around him and hack the antenna. On the way to the exit, he jumped me, but I teleport-stabbed him. Unfortunately, he'd stacked a thousand mines all around the exit, so I died anyway but it was still amusing.

There have also been some funny ones in which I've snuck around to the antenna, hacked it, done the objective, and then had to fight it out 10 minutes later at the exit. Playing as Julianna, you get awesome weapons a lot faster than you do as Colt, so if you just complete a few invasions you will tend to just have a lot of OP weapons and perks. Everything about the multiplayer works well EXCEPT the gunplay and direct combat.

The AI does have better placement and is more effective in some scenarios than others. One thing to keep in mind is that if you get spotted as Colt, it gives the Julianna player an indicator about where the Colt is. This makes it so that you really want to stealth as Colt, otherwise it gets really easy to set up an ambush and repeatedly kill you. If you stealth, you force the invader to figure out which objective you're going for or if they should guard the objective they think you're going after instead. The AI is sorta set up to make the multiplayer more interesting, not to be challenging in its own right.
 

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