Vapourware RPG Codex's Best RPGs - 2019 - REVIEW THREAD!

[Wyatt_Derp]

Most people can't get into shit from before their time. There are exceptions, I'm sure people are itching to reply to me to say they were born in 1999 and Betrayal at Krondor is their favorite game or whatever, but in a general sense most people don't go back further than their own experience by very much. I started PC RPGing with Lands of Lore and I'll admit it's hard for me to go back earlier than that, though I have here and there. With movies I'm far more willing to go back before my time for whatever reason, but even there I sometimes struggle with the very stage play feel of most 50s and earlier films. I don't think you're weird for feeling that way, but you should probably stop acting like those games/movies are bad. They're not bad, they just have styles and limitations you can't get along with.

100th monkey shit. Most people consider things before their time to be primitive, lesser versions of whatever the hell they're doing at the moment. Most kids these days don't care that there was a time when it was a big deal to put more than 1 CD's worth of audio on a media device... so on and whatnot.

And you can apply the same principle to future generations with contemporary trends. Kids these days don't understand that by the time they're 50, most of the kids in their future will have google maps and twitter feeds streaming in their cranial implants. As the saying goes, 'technology 100 years ago would be interpreted as magic, just as magic in modern times would be seen as technology.' The ability to frame and ponder a span of time grows weaker as we let more and more technology interpret for us what our window of observation should be. You can thank your corporate friends at Yahoo, Google, and Apple for this failure of organic adaptation. Games included. The longer the line of binary computing, the thinner the line of biological function. The Borg have arrived and they're sipping on cappuccinos while market trending your future significance.

 

[Sigourn]

There’s a large audience that enjoys the Minions movie but that doesn’t make it better than Citizen Kane.

What is "better"?

I’ll tell you how to recognize a game as a good game without personally enjoying it: ask yourself why you’re not enjoying it. If you’re not enjoying it because it’s too hard or too easy but recognize that it’s still doing cool stuff then you can see how it might be good despite your inability to enjoy it.

The issue is that if one were to do this, pretty much any game can be thought of to be "good". I don't enjoy Skyrim, but I see why people enjoy it, and thus I'm supposed to believe it is a "good game".

I find it funny that you say I’m mistaking good design with what I personally enjoy; you are literally the one saying that you can’t see how to judge a game as good if you don’t enjoy it.

I'm saying you are mistaking "good design" with what you personally enjoy because what you suggested is the metric to judge whether a game is good independently of whether you enjoy it or not will always yield the same result: every game is good, every single thing out there is good. There's always something that makes people love something. I don't find Adam Sandler's films funny, but people still love him. Likewise, I find Peep Show funny, but many people don't.

The answer to the question "how to recognize a game as a good game without personally enjoying it" is this: you don't. A game is either good for you, or not good for you. To go and shit on everyone else because you disagree with their opinion is dumb.

Do you just trust that something is better than something else based on which one has MORE people who like it? That’s the most normie thing I’ve ever heard.

Hmmm, to play a game recommended by thousands of people over a game recommended by millions... if I don't know anything else about the game in question, I know which one I'm going to try first. Any sane person would, unless you are one of those people (i.e. Codexers) who think "popular = bad"... and yet, there we have The Witcher III, on spot #15 no less.

It's human nature. You may not actually believe this, but that's how you are living your life right now. At one point you have done something because the popular opinion said it was good. The only difference between the taste of a meal and the quality of Frozen is that you knew things about

One final thing, you’ll probably say I should judge Skyrim as good because I should recognize it’s too easy for me but it’s an otherwise good game. I’d agree with that but it’s not an otherwise good game. Why do people enjoy it then you ask?
1) It’s their first time with an RPG like game
2)it’s popular and they (like you) value popular things
3)they haven’t played anything better yet so they assume this is as good as it gets

Two words for you: cRPG. Addict. Over 334 cRPGs to his name now. Skyrim not his first "RPG-like game". Played hundreds of games Skyrim players have never heard about, and many the Codex itself had never heard about. And many of those games, the Codex considers to be far better than Skyrim.

Like I said, you haven't judged Skyrim by your own "objective" metric. You simply don't like the game, and came up with the worst arguments to justify "but the game is actually shit, see? Everyone else is pretending to like it!". All you have said is literally "I don't like Skyrim and here's why". You've hardly explained why the game is objective shit and no one should like it, because you can't.

 

[Lady_Error]

"There are no bad games, only games that are not meant for you."

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

#22 Grimoire: this game is undeniably awful in everything that doesn't concern gameplay exclusively

Why are you doing this.

 

[Sigourn]

"There are no bad games, only games that are not meant for you."

I understand it is a controversial statement to make in a forum that is more famous for shitting on RPGs than it is famous for loving them. It had to be said and it was said.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

You've hardly explained why the game is objective shit and no one should like it, because you can't.

It's shit because it isn't good as an RPG and it isn't good as an Action game. The RPG mechanics are dulled down from character building that lacks purpose and reason, you can become the true chosen one of everything ever. This is the chosen one that all other chosen ones aspire to be. Skyrim lacks boundaries but also lacks depth. You can be whatever you want, but it won't be a satisfying RPG experience. There's no true weight to your decisions, you don't feel like much of what you do has any impact on the world and even doing something that should be very daunting like slaying a dragon is treated as a chore of an encounter a few levels in.

Action wise, the combat is terrible. No reactivity, your weapons go through enemies, the AI is dumb, the only time you feel something nice and brutal happened is through canned killscreens which are the Elder Scrolls equivalent of nu-Fallout VATS. While Fallout 3 and its ilk tries to disguise how bad the combat is by VATS'ing you up, Skyrim can't cloak itself that easily and instead you're left trading meaningless blows until the red healthbar drops down.

The worst sin of all this is Skyrim tries to hide its shortcomings by calling itself an RPG first, and everything else is second. But that's not the case, it's just a badly made game first and whatever it wants to label itself second. You have an AAA studio that takes their time between installments and you get a bug-ridden, clunky, shallow and underwhelming mess that feels like it can barely hold itself together. If Skyrim is a theme park, it's one where all the rides sound like they are on their last legs and at any point the track will derail and send you hurling to your fiery death. Which is what you want to do after two hours anyways.

Playing older ES games, you can see that the series has regressed exponentially. There was jankyness and ideas that didn't translate well at the time, but you always wondered how it would be later on down the line as technology became more refined and sophisticated. Yet, as we see, Skyrim failed to live up to such promise. It's a boring slog with stapled on "RPG" elements, a sandbox world that lacks much in the way of danger and discovery, and it forgot its true roots.

When I need to install at least 20-30 mods to feel like your game is finally able to be enjoyed, your game sucks. If I install a mod for a good RPG but it makes encounters more difficult/tactical or eliminates some glitches, it'll still always be a good RPG. With Skyrim you're dressing up a crackwhore as a princess but you're still stuck with a crackwhore.

Fuck Skyrim, brotha.

 

[Serious_Business]

With movies I'm far more willing to go back before my time for whatever reason

Movies didn't exactly change form since they started being made - same can be said about literature to a certain degree... I would speculate that interfaces and such are the reason why people can't play games before their time. In essence, it's a bit like watching a silent movie... truth of the matter is, this whole fucking place stinks because it criticizes a progressive media with traditional criteria : fuckers here imagine that games created a unmoving tradition of a hundred years, and that the standards are set in stone, but this shit has been going on for barely 30 years. It has no history, it doesn't know where it's going, and it's deeply linked to the current evolution of consciousness - the change from written media to electronic media. And this electronic media, what the fuck do you think it's doing? Is anyone thinking this at all? You ain't, aren't you, you little shits?

 

[Sigourn]

Generic-Giant-Spider Bro you did the same thing as howlingFantods. So let me elaborate: you cannot explain why Skyrim is objectively shit because that would mean people are living a lie, and they aren't. You talk about Skyrim's flaws (in your opinion) as things that should be flaws in everyone's eyes... but they clearly aren't. You think the RPG mechanics being "dulled down" is a problem, but most Skyrim players don't give a damn about it because they think it is an improvement over convoluted RPG mechanics found in other cRPGs. Same with "satisfying RPG experience": to you a satisfying RPG experience may be Fallout, and Skyrim players think it is one of the most unsatisfying RPG experiences ever made.

It is all opinion. What you say is true for you and you only. Other people may agree with it, including myself, but that doesn't mean your opinion is any more "true" or "objective" for anyone but yourself. I can't convince you a game you don't like is "good": you may think a certain game is good despite you not liking it (as howlingFantods suggested), but you are only kidding yourself. The game "ticks the right boxes", and yet you don't find it fun. Could it be that those boxes are not right at all?

The reason this debate started was because I said Wasteland had no reason to be above Wasteland 2, and I'm holding that ground until anyone can explain to me, being 100% honest, why they believe it is the better RPG. Because this is no "Skyrim should be above Fallout" argument: this is me asking the Codex which has a fairly uniform taste when it comes to RPGs, explaining why one game that was completely outclassed by its successor is positioned above it. "No one nominated it" isn't an explanation, I want to know why the people who nominated Wasteland thought it deserved to be nominated over Wasteland 2. That's it.

 

[Sigourn]

With movies I'm far more willing to go back before my time for whatever reason

Movies didn't exactly change form since they started being made - same can be said about literature to a certain degree... I would speculate that interfaces and such are the reason why people can't play games before their time. In essence, it's a bit like watching a silent movie... truth of the matter is, this whole fucking place stinks because it criticizes a progressive media with traditional criteria : fuckers here imagine that games created a unmoving tradition of a hundred years, and that the standards are set in stone, but this shit has been going on for barely 30 years. It has no history, it doesn't know where it's going, and it's deeply linked to the current evolution of consciousness - the change from written media to electronic media. And this electronic media, what the fuck do you think it's doing? Is anyone thinking this at all? You ain't, aren't you, you little shits?

What happens with movies is that around the 60s and 70s we reached a level of standarization when it came to the available technology, as well as the cinematographic language and acting. If I watch films from the 30s, 40s and 50s, quite often it feels "acted" and not natural at all. The Back to the Future trilogy are extremely popular films that hold up perfectly IMO. On the other hand, watching Rebel Without a Cause I could really tell it was a film that hadn't yet reached modern standards.

To quote another popular film, 2001: A Space Odyssey has hold up well too. Keep in mind I'm ignoring "special effects" and so on, that's more like comparing the graphics of a game released in 2010 to one released in 2019, while both can very much feel modern when it comes to the gameplay. I believe the film industry has to undergo some pretty important technological advancements before films like Back to the Future start feeling dated. Had 3D become so popular as to become the norm, I could have seen it happen already, but it didn't catch on.

 

[Neanderthal]

You went full Skyrim, you never go full Skyrim.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Bro you did the same thing as howlingFantods. So let me elaborate: you cannot explain why Skyrim is objectively shit because that would mean people are living a lie, and they aren't. You talk about Skyrim's flaws (in your opinion) as things that should be flaws in everyone's eyes... but they clearly aren't. You think the RPG mechanics being "dulled down" is a problem, but most Skyrim players don't give a damn about it because they think it is an improvement over convoluted RPG mechanics found in other cRPGs. Same with "satisfying RPG experience": to you a satisfying RPG experience may be Fallout, and Skyrim players think it is one of the most unsatisfying RPG experiences ever made.

I did explain why Skyrim is objectively shit because it is an RPG game that sucks as an RPG game. It failed to do what it set out to do. Even if it was a shitty RPG game then perhaps there would be a happy accident where it ends up having really great, visceral combat or something but it doesn't. It doesn't do anything right. The story sucks, the gameplay sucks, the mechanics suck. What makes Skyrim an objectively good game? I'm sure there are people, likely on the spectrum, that sit there and install all the enhanced floral and snowball mods they can scrounge up to get all nice and "immersive" but then comes that problem that happens to everyone that has ever touched that game: it dawns on you to enjoy all this, you need to actually play Skyrim.

Shit, it doesn't even work well as a porn game because of all the garbage animations that makes NPCs look like malfunctioning sexbots. It's irredeemable. It can't produce a good RPG, it can't be a decent action game, it has dogshit exploration and even if you try to use it to jerk off you feel like you need viagra to get any charge out of it. Skyrim is trash, nigga, T-R-A-S-H. I put Skyrim's box out on the street and it'll be gathering flies within five. Guarantee. Bums would look at that and fear it, thinking if it is touched they will be cursed with some sort of undiscovered plague.

 

[unfairlight]

Infinitron
Any chance of moving this wall of autism elsewhere?

 

[Sigourn]

I did explain why Skyrim is objectively shit because it is an RPG game that sucks as an RPG game. It failed to do what it set out to do.

How? Bethesda knew what they wanted to do, and succeeded at it: Skyrim is the most popular western RPG ever made.
Like I said a few times already, all you are doing is explain why you don't like Skyrim. If your explanations explained why Skyrim is objectively shit, then the game would have been a colossal sales failure: "objective" means you cannot argue against it, meaning everyone would agree with you, meaning no one would play it. "It doesn't even work well as a porn game", and yet thousands of people use Skyrim for porn, huh. "It has dogshit exploration", and yet every RPG released is measured against Skyrim's exploration, and more often than not comes out losing in the comparison. Yeah, "objectively shit".

 

[Neanderthal]

Popular, like herpes.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

How? Bethesda knew what they wanted to do, and succeeded at it: Skyrim is the most popular western RPG ever made.

McDonald's makes more than five star restaurants, but it's still shit.

 

[DalekFlay]

Movies didn't exactly change form since they started being made - same can be said about literature to a certain degree... I would speculate that interfaces and such are the reason why people can't play games before their time. In essence, it's a bit like watching a silent movie... truth of the matter is, this whole fucking place stinks because it criticizes a progressive media with traditional criteria : fuckers here imagine that games created a unmoving tradition of a hundred years, and that the standards are set in stone, but this shit has been going on for barely 30 years. It has no history, it doesn't know where it's going, and it's deeply linked to the current evolution of consciousness - the change from written media to electronic media. And this electronic media, what the fuck do you think it's doing? Is anyone thinking this at all? You ain't, aren't you, you little shits?

Interfaces are a major factor for me, yeah. Especially games that required taking notes or making maps, or adventure games with dead ends. These are things people who grew up with it are used to, but I can't adjust to. I think that's pretty common and a big part of what I meant. I'd argue these things can exist for movies too though... color photography, realistic dialog, more dynamic camera movement, less use of stages, franchising and now (sadly) CGI... these things changed the overall feel of movies more than most admit, and I bet it will be super hard for kids growing up with the Marvel films to go back to pre-CGI one and done stories, for example.

 

[howlingFantods]

If the purpose of a game is to be fun, then I'm literally unable to praise a game for doing something that I don't find fun.

So your enjoyment decides if a game is good.

I have asked myself if the people enjoying Skyrim are retards, or we are the defective human beings because we don't find enjoyment in it. Considering Skyrim
appeals to the most basic of enjoyment cycles which any healthy human being should have, I'm inclining for the latter.

You also say that you're stupid for not enjoying skyrim. Which means you consider Skyrim bad because you don't enjoy it.
But then if you think you're stupid for not enjoying it that means you think it's good but that you're too stupid to recognize its goodness.

No one badly designs a game as successful as Skyrim

But then you also say that Skyrim is well designed because a lot of people liked it (successful)?
I thought your personal enjoyment decided whether a game was good/well-designed?

Do you know what "cognitive dissonance" means?

 

[Nuclear Explosion]

With movies I'm far more willing to go back before my time for whatever reason, but even there I sometimes struggle with the very stage play feel of most 50s and earlier films.

How many have you actually seen? I've watched a lot of American movies that were made from the mid-1930s to the late-1950s, and very few felt like filmed theatre.

Some do have have weird acting, though. Rebel Without a Cause definitely does, and so do many of Nicholas Ray's movies -- I think he did it deliberately, see Bigger Than Life. As an aside, Godard once wrote "cinema is Nicholas Ray". (I dislike Godard's films because of the distantiation techniques he uses, but when he was a film critic he was infatuated with American films, so much so that some of his movies have visual references in them to obscure American B movies, and wrote insightfully about many of them; the article he wrote about Hitchcock's The Wrong Man is well worth reading.)

Because of WW2 a lot of European directors fled to the US and while not all were commercially successful, unfortunately Max Ophuls wasn't, it led to the American studio system at the time having an unprecedented number of skilled directors under contract, and the studio system meant that most of them made about a movie a year on average -- in most cases even their minor works are still good.

 

[aweigh]

Majority of people hate dungeon crawlers so it doesn't surprise me to see Grimoire being hated on. It's very rare for people to like good things.

 

[aweigh]

It is all opinion. What you say is true for you and you only. Other people may agree with it, including myself, but that doesn't mean your opinion is any more "true" or "objective" for anyone but yourself.

I can guarantee you that someone who eats a big bowl of shit is eating a big bowl of shit, regardless of whether or not they say the shit tastes good. Everyone objectively knows he is eating shit, and that shit is bad; yet there are people who do eat bowls of shit, in fact you need only see the movie Pink Flamingo to see the most famous example of someone eating shit, even though shit is objectively bad.

Just because people do something doesn't mean they do it because it's worthy of being done.

 

[Sigourn]

How? Bethesda knew what they wanted to do, and succeeded at it: Skyrim is the most popular western RPG ever made.

McDonald's makes more than five star restaurants, but it's still shit.

"No McDonald's, you haven't succeeded! All the money you have made is a lie because your food is shit."

This is how retarded you sound. Also imagine hating on McDonald's, of all places.

 

[Sigourn]

I can guarantee you that someone who eats a big bowl of shit is eating a big bowl of shit, regardless of whether or not they say the shit tastes good. Everyone objectively knows he is eating shit, and that shit is bad; yet there are people who do eat bowls of shit, in fact you need only see the movie Pink Flamingo to see the most famous example of someone eating shit, even though shit is objectively bad.

Just because people do something doesn't mean they do it because it's worthy of being done.

The way you phrase this makes it true. You've also given an example of eating shit because eating shit is literally harmful to your body. Playing and enjoying a videogame isn't.
There are videogames that very, very few people like. Or better said: that you will find a near impossible time finding someone who likes it, short of memeing. That would be the closest equivalent to "eating shit". Skyrim is not one of those games, though: millions upon millions love it, and they are everywhere to be seen. If shit had the same worldwide appeal, I may have taken a bite already just to see what the fuzz is all about.

Last but not least:

Just because the Codex says an RPG is good doesn't mean it is.

If the Codex says Planescape: Torment is the best RPG of all time, what I get is that the Codex thinks Planescape: Torment is the best RPG of all time. Nothing more, nothing less. My personal experience says otherwise, but you don't see me saying "fucking Codex loves visual novel shit".

 

[ERYFKRAD]

you haven't succeeded! All the money you have made is a lie

This is not the argument/

your food is shit.

This is.

 

[Sigourn]

If the purpose of a game is to be fun, then I'm literally unable to praise a game for doing something that I don't find fun.

So your enjoyment decides if a game is good.

My enjoyment decides if a game is good for me.

I have asked myself if the people enjoying Skyrim are retards, or we are the defective human beings because we don't find enjoyment in it. Considering Skyrim appeals to the most basic of enjoyment cycles which any healthy human being should have, I'm inclining for the latter.

You also say that you're stupid for not enjoying skyrim. Which means you consider Skyrim bad because you don't enjoy it.
But then if you think you're stupid for not enjoying it that means you think it's good but that you're too stupid to recognize its goodness.

I didn't say stupid. I used the word "defective". A human being with six fingers on one hand isn't "stupid", but defective.
And yes, I consider Skyrim bad for me because I don't enjoy it. The key words are "for me". Just because Skyrim isn't good for me doesn't mean the game is objectively bad and no one could possibly get any enjoyment out of it. You tried to make me step on myself, but as you can see you have failed.

No one badly designs a game as successful as Skyrim

But then you also say that Skyrim is well designed because a lot of people liked it (successful)?

Of course.

I thought your personal enjoyment decided whether a game was good/well-designed?

For me it is a badly designed game because it doesn't appeal to me. But to say the game is objectively bad designed, like you and others have claimed, is a lie because a game that is "objectively bad designed" couldn't have been as successful as Skyrim is.

Do you know what "cognitive dissonance" means?

Sure. Do you know what "reading comprehension" is?

 

[Vlajdermen]

It is all opinion. What you say is true for you and you only. Other people may agree with it, including myself, but that doesn't mean your opinion is any more "true" or "objective" for anyone but yourself.

I can guarantee you that someone who eats a big bowl of shit is eating a big bowl of shit, regardless of whether or not they say the shit tastes good. Everyone objectively knows he is eating shit, and that shit is bad; yet there are people who do eat bowls of shit, in fact you need only see the movie Pink Flamingo to see the most famous example of someone eating shit, even though shit is objectively bad.

Just because people do something doesn't mean they do it because it's worthy of being done.

Absolutely. This "no objective standards" argument is pure bullshit, and the people who use it never seem to follow through on it completely.
To give an example, Gamefaqs is full of people who use that argument to defend trash they like (nu-pokemon, nier automata, and so on), but they never step up when trash they don't like (skyrim, the last of us, and so on) is being spit on.
What I often tell these people is that the same logic can be applied to the emoji movie, or any type of shit entertainment. If objective standards don't exist, what is it that seperates Tolstoy's writing from that of Chris Chan?

TL;DR: Nobody actually believes that there's no objective standards. It's shit pushed by pansies who don't want to admit that they have shit taste.