I really like Doom's multiplayer. It feels a lot like old Halo, despite it having the modern load-out nonsense.

Doom was a good game this year, easily worth $30 IMO. Bethesda did DOOM and Wolfenstine right. Can't wait to see their inevitable sequels.

Doesn't that look great? I can't wait to watch it, and the story looks as interesting as I assumed it would be.

That looks absolutely fantastic. I didn't really know anything about the history of DOOM 2016. Sounds like it had some trouble getting started? I'll be interested to see that. I'm only partway through the game but it's already clear that it's a masterpiece.

We know Cody didn't like it, but is anyone else playing it? I have never enjoyed a Final Fantasy game. I played a bit of FF7 when a friend got it for his Windows computer in '98, but, to ten-year-old me, it didn't even come close to the joy of playing Ocarina of Time, so I wrote it off. I never tried another FF until FFXIII on Xbox 360, which I also didn't like. So I have basically no experience with the series.

It's fascinating, because the storytelling in the series has essentially shifted from the stage to film. Games Prior to 10 were essentially presented the same way a stage play would be, where we have a mostly unchanging, wide perspective of the characters while they converse. The characters in the old games had to use broad gestures. Jumps and stuff like that in the 16 bit games, and flamboyant animations in the Playstation era. This actually kind of worked well because it distanced you from what was actually going on and injected a certain amount of imagination into the experience. As a player when you have this distance, the lack of interactivity of the world and limitations of the world building are not felt nearly as much.

If you walk into a town in say, FFVII, you will find that there are a very limited number of places where you can go. You can maybe enter 5 houses. Which is ridiculous sounding right? Hundreds if not thousands of people should live there. People just stand around and have maybe 3 or 4 different phrases when you speak to them. But that doesn't bother you nearly as much because the method of presentation does not line up with how we perceive the world.

But when you switch to 3D, now the towns feel small. People standing around feels weird. None of the 3D games have overcome this. We don't get our characters in broad strokes and without voice acting, but we get cinematics with characters than are now more real and can emote much more effectively, which only more highlights the faults with the games.

Like Bioshock Infinite, these games take us to an uncanny valley becoming all the more common with games. The aesthetics suggest a world that the designers can't deliver.

Ratings:

15 - F
14 - N/A
13 - C+
12 - D
11 - N/A
10 - D-
9- B+
8 - A
7 - A-
6 - B+
4 - C

Everything else is shit.

8 is definitely the best one, so give it a try. There's no grinding required, since everything scales according to your level. In fact, being low level can be beneficial, since powering yourself up with the junction system can make you more powerful proportionally at lower levels. You can one hit the final boss at level 10, but not at 99 for example.

In addition, I feel as if 7 and 8 are actually about something.

Yeah I've been really enjoying FFXV a lot. My biggest complaints about it are mostly UX stuff (the icon to indicate you can interact with something shows up a fraction of a second before you can actually interact with it. I can't tell you how many times I've jumped instead of picking up an object). I love the combat system, and the more I learn about it the more fun it is. Magic is ridiculously overpowered, which I appreciate since you can beat some pretty hard enemies with the right use of magic. The quests, while mostly being fetch quests, I've enjoyed just because they give me an excuse to go to a place I haven't been and kill monsters. I'm way overleveled just because I am enjoying the combat, so no grinding for me! And the story is fairly good, and does not ease you in slowly which is a welcome change from the last few games. The random dialogue from your companions is a little too Entourage style brofest for me though.

Anyway, those are my rambling thoughts.

The first part of Noclip's DOOM series was posted yesterday, with Part 2 to come today and Part 3 tomorrow. I'll post those up in this thread when they hit.

This one covers what DOOM 4 would have been and why/how they rebooted it into just DOOM.

I hope this thread isn't low enough to be ignored--I didn't want to start yet another off-topic thread.

Stardew Valley released on PS4 and Xbox One this week. I highly recommend it for those that like a very leisurely experience. It's very Harvest Moon. You manage a farm, dive into caves to fight monsters and find loot, craft things, talk to the folks in town and give them gifts, go fishing, rebuild a community center, discover lots of secrets, etc. It's a very charming little game made by a single person over four years. You all probably remember it from it's release on Steam earlier this year.

The Steam version has controller support which is identical to the way it works on PS4. I'd maybe recommend to Steam version as it's not very taxing (My Surface Pro 4 runs it perfectly) and there are some neat mods available for it. That said, if PS4 is your only option or preferred platform, it's a totally good port and definitely worth a play at $15. FWIW, I have the Steam version, but I bought the PS4 version too and started a new farm.