LogFAQs > #945397466

BetrayedTangy posted...

Finally beat Red Dead Redemption today!

I noticed some good gameplay/story mixing with the sandbox too, yes. I think the whole "drive to NPC -> Drive to mission -> Do actual mission -> Drive back structure" is pretty common to Rockstar games unfortunately, and yeah I also consider it a major problem. Even looking at it laid out like that, it's three parts driving to one part actual mission! I try to go easy on fast travel in games. I guess because it's immersion breaking. I'm actually really fond of some games like Wind Waker and SotC that make commuting a big part of the game, but even then I still used the fast travel a lot by the end of RDR. I agree that it's not a very elegant fast travel system.

The lack of mission variety was definitely a problem for me too. I guess one thing that shows is that the normal shooting mechanics aren't all that compelling. While it's not a perfect example, something like Resident Evil 4 probably has an even greater percentage of just shooting sections than RDR, but I never considered it a problem because RE4's normal combat is tense and fun. So I guess either approach would've helped: either working harder on the shooting mechanics to make them more interesting, or adding more variety to the actual missions.

banananor posted...

As someone who hungrily devoured the lore booklet that came with sc1 as a kid, this hurts me

LOL I can imagine. I guess I just saw the flag in the first game and that was what my mind filled in. For the record, I looked on the Wiki while writing that post and realized both that I was wrong about the Confederacy's origins and that Mensk's crew used to be Raynor's pals in the first game, but didn't correct it for authenticity's sake.

Okay, so to conclude my writeup from last night:

The first mission I did was a mining-focused one on a lava planet. The goal is to gather a certain number of minerals. That poses an interesting challenge where you can spend minerals to recruit units, but that means elongating the map. On normal though, there are very few enemy attacks and you can mostly defend just with your SCVs. Lava periodically floods the lower regions of the map, so you have to high tail it out of there when the warning comes. This mainly serves to introduce players to the Terran ability to make buildings take off and fly around. You launch your command centers when the lava is coming and then plonk them back down once it drains. It's also the introduction of the Reaper unit, which can jump. Most units have to go the long way around to reach different areas of elevation, so being able to jump changes things a lot. One trick you can pull is to lure melee enemies over to ledges, jump up, and then safely pick them off from high ground. As a bonus objective, you have to kill a giant monster called a Brutalisk, who has a ton of health and a deadly attack, but it's actually really easy because he's slow and has a huge model, making him really easy to kite. It's not hard to take him down even with a small group of Reapers.

I've clocked in more than my fair share of hours with League of Legends, so kiting in RTS games is one thing I do have some practice in. Still, I've messed up a couple times trying it on really small enemies like Zerglings, because I would accidentally click on the ground close to them rather than their model, which would make my units run up into the enemies' claws instead of moving back and occasionally firing. You'd need to be quite the butterfingers to do that against the Brutalisk, though.

For the second mission, Jimmy and friends raid some special gas from a Protoss religious group. I had to retry this mission because I lost too many troops trying to break the Protoss base, which you do not need to do. I also thought I needed multiple SCVs to extract the gas quickly and was pulling my entire mineral gathering crew off for that purpose. In actuality, you really just need to send one. At first I wanted to use Hellions on this map, but they actually aren't that good because they can only target land units and the enemy uses a lot of aircraft. The map is more built around the Goliath unit, which it introduces. I guess the Goliath is roughly analogous to the Protoss' Stalker, as a ground based ranged unit a couple steps down the tech tree that can target both land and air units. I think it's more specialized as anti-air though. I mostly spammed Marines and Goliaths. It's not too hard to play really aggressively and finish this map quickly, but my successful attempt still took 25 minutes because I elongated it trying to get the optional relics for research, only to still leave without one and fail to get my next bonus from Protoss research as a result.

I think I found the vs. AI mode more fun than the campaign actually, and while I wasn't really feeling the game early on I think that piqued my interest a little more. I've yet to be drawn in by the story however.


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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 8/129
Currently Playing: Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty