Impressions thread for negative impressions
- Thread starter 3rdRate
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Have any example threads? I would love to read the fantasies.
Pope Viper said:
Read the damn IGN article. I have never before seen such a blatant, piece of marketing-driven fluff. I'm still trying to figure out how I could have worked "piece of shit" into that last sentence I'm so angry. Where the hell do I go for any decent game journalism now? Bring back Gamefan.
My main gripe with this would-be sequel is the inescapable fact that fights are meaningless and get repetitive. You simply cannot lose, and there are a lot more enemies in locations like vaults to compensate. I even went toe to toe with a deathclaw at a fairly low level and came out on top, albeit with 20 stimpacks less than before but so what? There are simply no armed force you cannot overcome without contemptous ease in this game after reaching a certain level. The opposition doesn't get harder as you level up, it's more like it's a little hard at the start when you're up against raiders with your puny 10mm pistol, and then it gradually gets annoyingly easy. Being able to instantly use 10 stimpacks completely removes challenge from firefights. It's like if you could carry around 200 healthpacks in Quake and just use them as you screwed up. Furthermore, close combat would frequently knock you down before, taking away action points to get back up, and thus making you either unable to strike back effectively, or unable to heal with stimpacks for 4ap or whatever it was to acces the inventory. Making fights DIFFICULT! One unlucky critical hit could completely ruin your day, or if it was a critical burst... That simply doesn't happen at all in F3
As you might guess I also miss the turn-based combat horribly. Why make this a bad shooter instead of a great "tactical" rpg in the sense that your charachter determines if you hit or miss, evade or die? I guess it's kicking a dead horse by now, many of you have already expressed your feelings about that there are good shooters out there that you can play if you want to play shooters, but not very many games like Fallout. VATS is a halfassed attempt to retain some type of thing where the charachters skill determines your chance of success, and goes from being something only viable at point-blank range, to an instant death for everthing in sight button.
It also feels like the weapon condition and reapir thing was brought in to justify the repair skill more, but somehow the old use for the repair skill just went out the window. I think I repaired perhaps one broken machine in all the pointless dungeoned abandoned factories with a few different sections all inhabited with different monsters. I don't think I've encountered a single building that was not infested with rad-roaches, ants, ghouls, super-mutants (though there's not a single one outside for miles) or raiders. The weapon condition is a good idea, but it feels like it has robbed this game of a balanced variety of weapons. For example, there is no Gauss rifle or similar end-game the gun to end all guns. If there was one, you could either find it in too many places and not only in that crate in the enclave base (another dissapointment btw) or you wouldn't be able to repair it because yours is the only one and what other gun would it use parts from? This could have been bypassed easily by having items that represented spare parts for a weapon. I also miss the different kinds of ammo you could use, and the upgrades like speedloader for the revolver, scoped hunting rifle etc. I also miss the H&K G11e and the Bozar, but even more I miss the large variaty of early game piece of crap weapons that you had to get by with up until Vault City or so.
I also feel the locations in the game are unrealistically close to each other. In a minute or two you can run from a mutantinfested area to the BoS base or from a town full of cannibals to another village with 2 inhabitants. Wouldn't shit happen? Yes, I realise I wouldn't want to run across more wasteland than necessary because that would be boring, and I DO LIKE the portrait of the wasteland in F3, I think it sets a great tone and I was really hooked by the game at the start. I guess i can't be constructive here because I don't know how you could get the best of two worlds with great wasteland scenery but still large distances between settlements.
And since this already is a spoiler thread, what the hell happened to the end-boss? Five shots three kills game over? With the grim reaper sprint it's just silly. Why didn't they build their water purifier by a large sweetwater lake or something instead of where a river meets the sea?
I'm not going to put a grade on this game. It's a great game in many ways, it starts out great, I don't think they failed to get the feeling right so much as they failed in making it a challenging game. You level way too fast and get good gear way too fast, and then when you get the high-end gear it's two retardedly simple missions from the end? I also think the inclusion of at least one vault where the inhabitants hadn't gone crazy somehow would have been interesteing...
I guess we are all judging it harshly because we're comparing it to Fallout 2, but hey, it claims to be a sequel doesn't it? It's pretty cozy to run around the wasteland with your sniper rifle, the ambient music is pretty good, though not quite as sad as the San Fransisco music in F2. The ruined freeways and the empty husks of houses are also very nicely done. If they could have kept up the feeling of need to scavenge every bullet and joy over finding a better weapon/armor, removed the level cap (ffs?), and reduced the amount of xp dramatically, it would have been even better.
I got some kind of substitute for fallout 3 out of this game, it wasn't what I've been waiting for, but it was a good experience for a while, then an increasing disappointment.
Phew, I just had to vent all this somewhere. Sorry :p
P.S. That IGN review is full of fail
As you might guess I also miss the turn-based combat horribly. Why make this a bad shooter instead of a great "tactical" rpg in the sense that your charachter determines if you hit or miss, evade or die? I guess it's kicking a dead horse by now, many of you have already expressed your feelings about that there are good shooters out there that you can play if you want to play shooters, but not very many games like Fallout. VATS is a halfassed attempt to retain some type of thing where the charachters skill determines your chance of success, and goes from being something only viable at point-blank range, to an instant death for everthing in sight button.
It also feels like the weapon condition and reapir thing was brought in to justify the repair skill more, but somehow the old use for the repair skill just went out the window. I think I repaired perhaps one broken machine in all the pointless dungeoned abandoned factories with a few different sections all inhabited with different monsters. I don't think I've encountered a single building that was not infested with rad-roaches, ants, ghouls, super-mutants (though there's not a single one outside for miles) or raiders. The weapon condition is a good idea, but it feels like it has robbed this game of a balanced variety of weapons. For example, there is no Gauss rifle or similar end-game the gun to end all guns. If there was one, you could either find it in too many places and not only in that crate in the enclave base (another dissapointment btw) or you wouldn't be able to repair it because yours is the only one and what other gun would it use parts from? This could have been bypassed easily by having items that represented spare parts for a weapon. I also miss the different kinds of ammo you could use, and the upgrades like speedloader for the revolver, scoped hunting rifle etc. I also miss the H&K G11e and the Bozar, but even more I miss the large variaty of early game piece of crap weapons that you had to get by with up until Vault City or so.
I also feel the locations in the game are unrealistically close to each other. In a minute or two you can run from a mutantinfested area to the BoS base or from a town full of cannibals to another village with 2 inhabitants. Wouldn't shit happen? Yes, I realise I wouldn't want to run across more wasteland than necessary because that would be boring, and I DO LIKE the portrait of the wasteland in F3, I think it sets a great tone and I was really hooked by the game at the start. I guess i can't be constructive here because I don't know how you could get the best of two worlds with great wasteland scenery but still large distances between settlements.
And since this already is a spoiler thread, what the hell happened to the end-boss? Five shots three kills game over? With the grim reaper sprint it's just silly. Why didn't they build their water purifier by a large sweetwater lake or something instead of where a river meets the sea?
I'm not going to put a grade on this game. It's a great game in many ways, it starts out great, I don't think they failed to get the feeling right so much as they failed in making it a challenging game. You level way too fast and get good gear way too fast, and then when you get the high-end gear it's two retardedly simple missions from the end? I also think the inclusion of at least one vault where the inhabitants hadn't gone crazy somehow would have been interesteing...
I guess we are all judging it harshly because we're comparing it to Fallout 2, but hey, it claims to be a sequel doesn't it? It's pretty cozy to run around the wasteland with your sniper rifle, the ambient music is pretty good, though not quite as sad as the San Fransisco music in F2. The ruined freeways and the empty husks of houses are also very nicely done. If they could have kept up the feeling of need to scavenge every bullet and joy over finding a better weapon/armor, removed the level cap (ffs?), and reduced the amount of xp dramatically, it would have been even better.
I got some kind of substitute for fallout 3 out of this game, it wasn't what I've been waiting for, but it was a good experience for a while, then an increasing disappointment.
Phew, I just had to vent all this somewhere. Sorry :p
P.S. That IGN review is full of fail
Sorrow said:
Well, I more or less got what I expected after Pagan, all the ruckus, then the silence, the problems Origin was in, and the fact that they started from scratch with a new engine 3 times during development... After all that there wasn't much room for disappointment, it was just sad, to play Ascension, see the locations, the ingame-videos, while having the original plot in mind (that was released years before the game) and actually know what could/should have been.
Pagan on the other hand was really anticipated after that cliffhanger in the end of Serpent's Isle, and nobody did expect such a severe break of gameplay AND storytelling.
Pagan was my first bout of how a great series could quickly go into the dump.
It's a shame that EA has made such a load of cash off of UO, I'd love for the original devs who gave a damn about the franchise to get it's hands on it.
Gee, that sounds familiar.
It's a shame that EA has made such a load of cash off of UO, I'd love for the original devs who gave a damn about the franchise to get it's hands on it.
Gee, that sounds familiar.
Roflcore said:
"LALALA as long as I pretend there's nothing good at all about this game nothing will be good about it!1"
Now where have I seen this before...
Note: This isn't (at least, not intentionally) a troll post. I just want to try and point out that both sides are making ridiculously one-sided judgments without thoroughly thinking everything through.
On a side note, check out MSNBC's review of FO3. I like FO3, and I still think that review is mostly marketing.
I would say 95% of the reviews are just another gear in BS's hype machine.
goffy59
Still Mildly Glowing
Ah, the OP is so right. Now I don't even need to play the game to know for sure what I already thought. I'm glad the admins vatted my other thread, this one explains in such great detail. I couldn't even form every thing I hated about it. But still the Vault intro part wasn't so bad, but after you leave, which I was out for about 5 minutes I already hated the game. When I spoke to the prostitute, thats when I closed the game. Now I have 6gigs's free on my hard drive. Thank you very much for the real review.
darkmoon303
First time out of the vault
1st) Hello to all.
I wholeheartedly agree with the thread starter.
What comes to my mind are the few outstanding exmaples HOW a CRPG - even a sequel - can be done in a good way.
Remember Arx Fatalis? That was a sequel to ultima Underworld - they just couldn't buy the name off EA. That game has atmosphere and imemrsion written all over it. It even manages am almost perfect blend of player skill / character skill. Partly through the limited expereince to be gained but also through an inventive magic system.
Now TES:FO fails in like all of this. I really thought waht a great game to come as i stepped out of the Vault. It vanished after a few hours into the totally boring gameworld.
Any arguments are in vain though: The games was made to generate an absurd amount of income for Bethesda .. so it did.
I am more looking forward to the next-gen rpg of larian studios.
I wholeheartedly agree with the thread starter.
What comes to my mind are the few outstanding exmaples HOW a CRPG - even a sequel - can be done in a good way.
Remember Arx Fatalis? That was a sequel to ultima Underworld - they just couldn't buy the name off EA. That game has atmosphere and imemrsion written all over it. It even manages am almost perfect blend of player skill / character skill. Partly through the limited expereince to be gained but also through an inventive magic system.
Now TES:FO fails in like all of this. I really thought waht a great game to come as i stepped out of the Vault. It vanished after a few hours into the totally boring gameworld.
Any arguments are in vain though: The games was made to generate an absurd amount of income for Bethesda .. so it did.
I am more looking forward to the next-gen rpg of larian studios.
zioburosky13
Vault Senior Citizen
Dead Guy said:
Not to mention you can kill an Enclave soldier with a 10mm SMG with ease, even in Very Hard mode. These guys are still a powerful foe to face with in FO2 because of their equipment (armor and weapon. Damn those YK32 Pulse Pistol, always kill dogmeat).
In FO3 they were dumbed down and act like marauding raider with power armor.
DOF_power said:
You sound like someone who has not played a strategy game. "Dungeon crawling strategy" is a term I just heard from the first time, and calling Fallout a "turn-based strategy" is as much an insult to Fallout as it is to great TBS games like Civ or HOMM
Why is Eden evil? I thought he's plan was sound. Giving mankind a second chance by erradicating the threats to it.
Ausdoerrt said:
The problem I see is that far too many people define the term RPG as "My character has stats, and an inventory." That's not what an RPG is. And RPG is a Role Playing Game - that is, you play the role of someone. One could nitpick then that any game is an RPG, because you're always the role of someone but the biggest defining feature of a cRPG is choice and interaction with the world around you.
Fallout (1/2/3) are RPGs because you can shape the way your character is - he can interact in different ways with the environment and people around him, and they reflect those different interactions. The early dungeon crawlers, not so much. You were a collection of stats that ran though a dungeon slaughtering stuff. It really is much more a strategy game than a role playing game, when going by the actual words used, at least.
beats me, but if you go along with his plan the ending of the game makes it sound like you're some kind of little hitler. god forbid anyone should want to get rid of the super mutants and ghouls I guess they're a protected minority group according to bethesdaDragula said:
Yeah, to much political correctness in the game. I did go a long with the plan, I wonder if they would take such actions into consideration if they made an after-ending expansion.oihrebwe said:
oihrebwe said:
Considering how many times you could have mutated in Fallout 3 (Limb regeneration, bark-skin, etc) in the short amount of time being outside the Vault, I would suspect a massive amount of surviving wastelanders would have been "purified" off the face of the Earth. The Enclave and isloated Vault inhabitants would be the ones spared this bioweapon's wrath.
Plus the general concensus of "bioweapon usage = evil" no matter the intent. Rent Outbreak and let Hoffman edumacate you!
You know. After finally putting some time in to the game, and beating it, I'd have to agree with the OP.
At first I was stoked. I even posted on here a few times about how surprised I was at how good the game was.
I think the first moment where reality started setting in was when I hit level 20 and realized that as far as building my character went, that was it. This caused me to start thinking about how lousy the character creation was, and frankly how awful the character progression is.
The Traits/Perks have been ruined. Most of them aren't worth taking, such as the ones that raise your gun and secondary skills, because you'll easily have enough points to max everything out.
The scaling of the enemies really strikes me as just taking an easy way out of game design. It's much harder to actually do the math and plan a game out, making sure the pacing is right, and that there even is pacing. They take the absolutely easiest way out of the meat of the game. What is an RPG without a robust way to build and grow your character?
Their art team rocks. Even though it looks like a year after the bombs fell, and not 200 years after, the world still looks great. I really had fun wandering around just discovering things. At first it seemed like there would be lots of replay value, but after you discover everything on the map, a second play through just seems tedious, because you know where all this stuff is. There is no random encounters, so there is no thrill of discovery that the first play through had.
The writing sucks. Period. Maybe not the dialogue itself, but the writing. It's really bad. Take the vaults for example. The art team made those look fantastic. They really got the feel of the vaults. So what did they do with them? Mud crabs, and insane vault dwellers. Thats it. The VR Simulation in 112 is actually pretty cool, but that was the high point. Vault 108 was the worst. A whole vault dedicated to a stupid inside joke on a forum that doesn't even involve a Bethesda or Fallout game. I had to look up the reference online, because the whole premise of the vault was just dumb. What a waste of a good vault... I was hoping for a deep military base like The Glow, but there was none of that. Fort Constantine was far to small, and far too easy to get through.
The Mudcrab 2.0 and the creature from the black lagoon... What. The. Fuck. are those doing in a Fallout game? They looked like out-takes from Oblivion in there, and they problably were.
The Vats combat system worked better than I thought it would. That was one thing they got half-way right. The idea of radios was cool, but like so much else, when it came time to think of ways to utilize them, the writers sucked at coming up with anything really interesting.
I'll stop now. Let's just say the fucking honeymoon is over, and the initial joy I had thinking Fallout was back is over.
At first I was stoked. I even posted on here a few times about how surprised I was at how good the game was.
I think the first moment where reality started setting in was when I hit level 20 and realized that as far as building my character went, that was it. This caused me to start thinking about how lousy the character creation was, and frankly how awful the character progression is.
The Traits/Perks have been ruined. Most of them aren't worth taking, such as the ones that raise your gun and secondary skills, because you'll easily have enough points to max everything out.
The scaling of the enemies really strikes me as just taking an easy way out of game design. It's much harder to actually do the math and plan a game out, making sure the pacing is right, and that there even is pacing. They take the absolutely easiest way out of the meat of the game. What is an RPG without a robust way to build and grow your character?
Their art team rocks. Even though it looks like a year after the bombs fell, and not 200 years after, the world still looks great. I really had fun wandering around just discovering things. At first it seemed like there would be lots of replay value, but after you discover everything on the map, a second play through just seems tedious, because you know where all this stuff is. There is no random encounters, so there is no thrill of discovery that the first play through had.
The writing sucks. Period. Maybe not the dialogue itself, but the writing. It's really bad. Take the vaults for example. The art team made those look fantastic. They really got the feel of the vaults. So what did they do with them? Mud crabs, and insane vault dwellers. Thats it. The VR Simulation in 112 is actually pretty cool, but that was the high point. Vault 108 was the worst. A whole vault dedicated to a stupid inside joke on a forum that doesn't even involve a Bethesda or Fallout game. I had to look up the reference online, because the whole premise of the vault was just dumb. What a waste of a good vault... I was hoping for a deep military base like The Glow, but there was none of that. Fort Constantine was far to small, and far too easy to get through.
The Mudcrab 2.0 and the creature from the black lagoon... What. The. Fuck. are those doing in a Fallout game? They looked like out-takes from Oblivion in there, and they problably were.
The Vats combat system worked better than I thought it would. That was one thing they got half-way right. The idea of radios was cool, but like so much else, when it came time to think of ways to utilize them, the writers sucked at coming up with anything really interesting.
I'll stop now. Let's just say the fucking honeymoon is over, and the initial joy I had thinking Fallout was back is over.