Clearly inferior to all of them, and overall very mediocre but still mildly enjoyable.
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- Thread starter potatojohn
- Start date
Clearly inferior to all of them, and overall very mediocre but still mildly enjoyable.
Be Kind Rewind
Educated
Following up my previous post in this thread about Bloodlines. Unsurprisingly the latter half of the game, and the endgame, did not turn out to be buggier or more unfinished than the first half, 1.2 was still smooth sailing up until the very end. Unlike Arcanum that had botched ending slides scripting that Drog had to fix up, that I did encounter playing that game without his patch a year or so ago, but Arcanum's bugginess is also overstated and often exaggerated.
One of the reasons, other than many never having played the official patched version, that contributes to a reputation of Bloodlines being a buggy and unfinished game must be that over time people have come to expect a standardized Deus Ex sort of FPS-RPG bastardization, If you've played a more recent one you know the drill, in every mission or quest there must be a speech check that lets you automatically win it, several convenient ventilation hatches all over the place, computer systems that solve everything for hackers and so on. Bloodlines focuses on atmosphere and conversations most of the time, when it does not it is much more traditional and places like the Hollywood sewers are very much like a more traditional dungeon, although without many of the things that make crawling them great. D.W. Bradley managed to retain much of dungeon crawling staples in Dungeon Lords, hot off the release of at the time ultra-traditionalist Wizards & Warriors, with traps, labyrinthine navigation and enemy encounters comparable to Wizardry but in a more action oriented sort of way.
Obviously the focus was not on this with Bloodlines, but even if it had been I don't think the modern world, unless set in a warzone, lends itself to that sort of gameplay. Makes it feel like something is missing when the game is stripped down to these bare elements, of combat and sneaking, hacking and lockpicking contributing to navigation, but many skills being more or less useless. But this isn't because they had to rush the game, at the very start by the beach you get the same design there too, with a quest of getting a stolen item back you can either sneak and take it, or kill everyone, and that's it. It's very traditional gameplay, but in Bloodlines you probably had more fun spooking someone with blood magic in conversation than you had waving your slightly underwhelming pop gun around, the tabletop system itself was focused on the social bit more so than combat.
The only part of the game that felt rushed or undercooked was the Giovanni Stronghold, with things to find that didn't lead anywhere, and one NPC had unvoiced lines, but it wasn't a huge deal and I think they would have improved the game by cutting most of it, at that point I had already explored four large hubs filled with content and I just wanted to finish the game already. Arcanum is a game with enough going on that it could have used an expansion, to fill in the continent with more locations, and spice it up with more dungeons, it's a large map and some places were underused. Bloodlines on the other hand almost outstayed its welcome but managed to close the curtains before I got bored with it.
There's a bit more combat towards the end, and we get a late re-enactment of The Matrix lobby scene when you assault LaCroix's tower, with an explosive finale.
Not much more to say about it, other than that the diegetic hacking interface being like a command line OS is cool. SiN did it earlier with terminals with command lines, but that sort of thing vanished when games became more console-centric, due to lack of keyboards. There's been a few games to bring that back, one among them being Fortune's Run, but it's still very rare to see. It's also making me lament not seeing more modern setting RPGs back in the 90's and 00's, now it is too late for the industry to produce anything decent even if they wanted to. It allows for plots that simply aren't possible in fantasy RPGs, like tracking down the source of a snuff film, and it makes ranged combat less gay.
One of the reasons, other than many never having played the official patched version, that contributes to a reputation of Bloodlines being a buggy and unfinished game must be that over time people have come to expect a standardized Deus Ex sort of FPS-RPG bastardization, If you've played a more recent one you know the drill, in every mission or quest there must be a speech check that lets you automatically win it, several convenient ventilation hatches all over the place, computer systems that solve everything for hackers and so on. Bloodlines focuses on atmosphere and conversations most of the time, when it does not it is much more traditional and places like the Hollywood sewers are very much like a more traditional dungeon, although without many of the things that make crawling them great. D.W. Bradley managed to retain much of dungeon crawling staples in Dungeon Lords, hot off the release of at the time ultra-traditionalist Wizards & Warriors, with traps, labyrinthine navigation and enemy encounters comparable to Wizardry but in a more action oriented sort of way.
Obviously the focus was not on this with Bloodlines, but even if it had been I don't think the modern world, unless set in a warzone, lends itself to that sort of gameplay. Makes it feel like something is missing when the game is stripped down to these bare elements, of combat and sneaking, hacking and lockpicking contributing to navigation, but many skills being more or less useless. But this isn't because they had to rush the game, at the very start by the beach you get the same design there too, with a quest of getting a stolen item back you can either sneak and take it, or kill everyone, and that's it. It's very traditional gameplay, but in Bloodlines you probably had more fun spooking someone with blood magic in conversation than you had waving your slightly underwhelming pop gun around, the tabletop system itself was focused on the social bit more so than combat.
The only part of the game that felt rushed or undercooked was the Giovanni Stronghold, with things to find that didn't lead anywhere, and one NPC had unvoiced lines, but it wasn't a huge deal and I think they would have improved the game by cutting most of it, at that point I had already explored four large hubs filled with content and I just wanted to finish the game already. Arcanum is a game with enough going on that it could have used an expansion, to fill in the continent with more locations, and spice it up with more dungeons, it's a large map and some places were underused. Bloodlines on the other hand almost outstayed its welcome but managed to close the curtains before I got bored with it.
There's a bit more combat towards the end, and we get a late re-enactment of The Matrix lobby scene when you assault LaCroix's tower, with an explosive finale.
Not much more to say about it, other than that the diegetic hacking interface being like a command line OS is cool. SiN did it earlier with terminals with command lines, but that sort of thing vanished when games became more console-centric, due to lack of keyboards. There's been a few games to bring that back, one among them being Fortune's Run, but it's still very rare to see. It's also making me lament not seeing more modern setting RPGs back in the 90's and 00's, now it is too late for the industry to produce anything decent even if they wanted to. It allows for plots that simply aren't possible in fantasy RPGs, like tracking down the source of a snuff film, and it makes ranged combat less gay.
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2015
- Messages
- 4,651
That guy looks familiar.Following up my previous post in this thread about Bloodlines. Unsurprisingly the latter half of the game, and the endgame, did not turn out to be buggier or more unfinished than the first half, 1.2 was still smooth sailing up until the very end. Unlike Arcanum that had botched ending slides scripting that Drog had to fix up, that I did encounter playing that game without his patch a year or so ago, but Arcanum's bugginess is also overstated and often exaggerated.
Ivan
Arcane
In all my playthroughs I've never encountered the shark boss, is he tied to a specific clan/quest that I just kept missing (in Chinatown)?
Modron
Arcane
- Joined
- May 5, 2012
- Messages
- 10,513
No specific clan you just talk to the asian lady in the skirt you can see up in the background of that screenshot to get the quest out on the street and agree to help her kill it, pretty sure it's base game and not even restored content either.
Tonight's adventures of Kanthaka brought to you by some forest hermit doing a very nice Urdhva Mukha Pashchimothanasana :
Some horse exploration, or horsbex :
And the next one is going to be hard to beat :
Notice that this magnificent beast is a male :
Go Kanthaka ! Crush Rattay beneath your mighty hooves !
Some horse exploration, or horsbex :
And the next one is going to be hard to beat :
Notice that this magnificent beast is a male :
Go Kanthaka ! Crush Rattay beneath your mighty hooves !
I was right. GTA 3 is way harder than Liberty City Stories. Especially the last three main missions and the ones from the third phone booth. The cops are total maniacs and if you have FBI on your tail it's really hard to survive. The game still holds up thanks to the great soundtrack, depressing atmosphere of the city, and our protagonist Claude being silent for the whole time. Apparently Rockstar had so much problems with the engine, that they've decided to just keep him that way, and were fixing other issues instead. GTA III is such a psychopathic joyride that we don't need it anyway.
NecroLord
Dumbfuck!
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2022
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- 11,346
Legends never die.
Be Kind Rewind
Educated
It's really not that esoteric, you walk right from where you enter Chinatown and go into the closed noodle shop and talk to the anti-demon ninja Jap girl in there, and then you find the guy that smells like vagina in the Red Dragon restaurant. This is in the official patch version of the game, no fan fixpacks or restored content, the only way to miss it is if you don't explore at all or if Wesp broke the quest chain somehow.
Ivan
Arcane
sleeping good tonight
NecroLord
Dumbfuck!
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2022
- Messages
- 11,346
Talk to the anime girl demon hunter in the Ramen shop, then go to Ming Xiao and ask her about Zygaena, THEN go and talk to him in the Red Dragon.
Be aware that Yukie can die during the fight and that Zygaena himself hits pretty hard and can be a rather tough boss fight if you do not have good combat skills (either Melee or Firearms).
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NecroLord
Dumbfuck!
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2022
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- 11,346
Screw the french revolutionary ideals, right?
Nelka
Educated
Met some wise Codexer on my way
v1c70r14
Educated
Kabas BlackAdderBG since you tagged it citation needed
Pretty good survival game, big focus on scavenging the island and actually surviving.
Pretty good survival game, big focus on scavenging the island and actually surviving.
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2017
- Messages
- 29,530
The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water.
Dude is a honorary codexer.
Precisely those things you listed were the reason no one gave a shit.
The market for a mostly mindless shooter is much larger than for a more sophisticated, mostly cerebral game. Most people just wanted a shoot'em up in 3D.
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