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PC|XS|PS5|ONE|PS4 Elden Ring

Unread postby icycalm » 10 Jun 2021 23:41

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Gameplay Trailer 【SummerGameFest2021】
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6pCyV7PnqI

This just dropped. Let me tell you what I think.

  • It is a pretty but empty game, just like all the soulsborne games. However, the emptiness here is more apparent because of the openness; if the space is claustrophobic dungeons, you don't expect to find much life there, but in open environments it can feel depressing, and not in a good way.
  • Action is generic and subdued. Ergo this isn't an action game like Sekiro—unless it is a bad action game. This is a soulsborne game with slightly more open environments.
  • What did R. R. Martin even do in this game? The trailer is the same garbage non-plot as in any Devil May Cry. That guy is a novelist skilled at crafting scores of interacting characters, but there are no characters in this game, let alone interacting ones. A child could have written the plot.
  • Graphics are last-gen. Good for what they are, but last-gen.
  • Art direction lacks direction. Weaker than any soulsborne game I've seen from From. Weaker than the average From game in ANY genre even. Still very good of course. Just not great.

They better have some very cool gimmick in this or some redeeming feature of some kind that wasn't shown in the trailer. I can easily see this getting delayed a la Halo Infinite.

January 21, 2022.
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Unread postby icycalm » 11 Jun 2021 00:08

It looks much better in screens than in the trailer. Maybe because I saw the trailer windowed on a laptop. No idea if this is CG or in-engine. If it's in-engine, it's current-gen-ish.

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More here: https://twitter.com/Nibellion/status/14 ... 6982279174
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Unread postby Robomoo » 04 Nov 2021 17:27

15 Minute Gameplay Preview Livestream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30zvFqyLFK8

It looks like everything you could want from open-world Dark Souls. The shot at 17:00 alone was enough to make me preorder.
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Unread postby Robomoo » 20 Feb 2022 18:04

Overview Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT8if6DXOFQ

The world looks massive.
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Unread postby icycalm » 20 Feb 2022 22:12

That trailer is insane. I stopped watching halfway through though because it shows too much.

I wonder how tough it would be to run at 4K. Here's a discussion on that from two months ago:

What kind of system requirements on PC do we think will be required for ray tracing at a locked 4K/60 FPS?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comm ... _pc_do_we/

aiden041 wrote:maxed at native 4k and RT 60 fps is usually gonna require rtx2080 or better at the very least.


Sontifx wrote:you sure about that?

I have 2080 and struggle to run DS3 at 4k 60. But it might just be bad optimization though.


AshenRathian wrote:But why is everyone suddenly going on about raytracing? Fromsoft never uses stuff like that.


"Stuff like that" lol. Console pleb confirmed.

NixFuentz wrote:It has been confirmed that ray tracing support will be added via a post launch patch for PC. There’s multiple articles outlining what will be supported for PC and other consoles. I’m not sure about playstation and xbox but Pc will have HDR, Ray tracing, a maximum resolution of 4k, and a 60 fps lock.


e_smith338 wrote:3080 if you want that Rez, that frame rate, AND full ray tracing. mostly the resolution is what will succ the power


This seems to me a game for 4K60 on projector with ray-tracing. Ergo, 3090 minimum. Better yet 4090 in about a year.

I think we're getting to the point where 1080p really fails to showcase the artwork put into these games. And don't talk to me about 1440p. That shit only comes in tiny monitor size. That's even worse than running the game at 1080p.
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CULT LIVE: Elden Ring

Unread postby ChevRage » 01 Mar 2022 11:25

Elden Ring with ChevRage, Beakman and Robomoo 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3imUns3jal4

Elden Ring with ChevRage 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkYTdfVzkJI

Elden Ring with ChevRage 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0EluLTp0o4

Elden Ring with ChevRage 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LwLVqNbths

I'm really liking it. But then again I've always liked these exploration-heavy games. The much larger, more outdoor-focused world is very enjoyable to be in, and the scenery is stunning. It's at the point where I keep getting distracted by cool-looking stuff in the distance and forgetting to do the main quest, lol.

I also like the lack of handholding. Some of the not-bonfires emit some particles that point you into a particular direction, but they're easy to ignore. And the map is quite pretty. The style resembles the DND 5E map style, which I liked. It's detailed enough to show you the lay of the land, while at the same time not showing you every point of interest, so you have to actually look at the world around you to find places of note.

Another thing I like about the map screen is that it doesn't show you the entire world's size straight away. The borders expand as you travel out of them, meaning the world could be far larger than it initially appears.

Yeah they've definitely gone back to the soulsborne kind of action for this one, but so far it seems like it's better than it has been in previous Souls entries. The action is kind of lame, but the level of customisation allowed to you as far as equipment goes seems very good. They've combined a bunch of cool gimmicks that have been in previous games as well as adding some more. Each weapon has a somewhat unique special move that costs FP, a kind of magic I suppose, like in DS3. And you can find magical smithing items around the world that change those special moves. Power-stancing from DS2 is back in, it's a kind of dual-wielding that allows you to use both equipped weapons in a unique moveset. You can now jump, so there's a heavy jump attack of sorts. And there's a lot more I'm just finding out about as I play.

And now that there's a horse, you can attack on horseback too. It's very easy to control and works surprisingly well with the lock-on system. It does trivialise some of the combat with the foot soldiers, but you can easily get knocked off your horse if you aren't careful. Some of the really huge enemies of the game seem to be designed with fighting them on the horse in mind.

There's now also some stealth in the game, but it's just to the extent of adding bushes. You can crouch in them when sneaking up to enemies for a backstab. Their AI is usually fairly brain-dead though, not even registering their colleagues' dead bodies.

While the huge world enhances the exploration, it really highlights the crappy enemy AI behaviour. While waiting for you they either stand in their designated spots, or patrol back and forth on fixed paths. It really hasn't changed much at all since Demon's Souls. It definitely feels less like a living breathing world such as GTA, and more like a very large dungeon with really really large open environments.

As for the multiplayer, well, we tried it for a bit. You can see me and Robo joining Beakman's game in the first video, around about 1 hour and 20 minutes into it. We had some troubles with connection errors and I had to go soon after, but we had enough time to try our hand at fighting a large enemy and also attacking an enemy outpost.

It was fun playing it with the guys, but there's no way to play through the whole game seamlessly, at least with how I understand it. When you're in somebody else's world you still earn experience with each kill, and can even pick up loot that the enemies drop. But you can't talk to NPCs, so you can't purchase anything at the shops. And nobody can ride a horse so some enemies, like the dragons, might be impossible to defeat. And since summoned players get thrown out of the host's world after beating a significant boss, they might need to beat that boss in their own world before they can help challenge the next one. Robo and Beak played quite a lot longer with each other after I left, so they probably know more than I do about how the co-op works in this game.

Anyway, despite a lot of this antiquated design, I'm still enjoying the game. I don't think it'll be a masterpiece or anything though.
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Unread postby icycalm » 01 Mar 2022 16:25

Thanks for the impressions.

One of the greatest benefits about this game is that I just don't see how they could go back to dungeon-crawlers again. Of course I am sure they will, but it just doesn't make sense, for the same reason turn-based dungeon-crawlers disappeared in the '80s once developers started making proper worlds for CRPGs. So even if they do make another dungeon-crawler, they'll at least do it a lot more sparingly.

Note it's okay to have dungeons INSIDE proper games, like this one does. It's not okay however to have an entire game set inside a dungeon, as I explained in my Doom essay: https://culture.vg/reviews/videogame-ar ... -doom.html
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Robomoo impressions

Unread postby Robomoo » 01 Mar 2022 20:02

One thing Chev didn't really mention, I guess because he hasn't got far enough yet, is that the open world feels insanely huge. I thought "Wow the map is twice as big as I thought it was" about five times already. The sheer amount of different stuff packed into it is overwhelming. For example, you get this view near the beginning of the game:

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Every single castle there you can go and explore, with the previous castle I'd just beaten providing about two hours of exploration and two really cool bosses. And the area visible in that screenshot is less than 1/10th of the map I've uncovered so far (it just keeps on expanding). It's not all just one type of landscape either, there's a whole underground zone, a kind of desert, a giant city zone, volcano land, etc. etc. Chev is 16 hours in and he's not even past the first castle (though you can actually go around the castle to get to this area if you want. That's another cool thing—everyone on my Steam activity feed has beaten bosses in a completely different order).

However, the content is stretched a little bit thin over such a huge world. The first castle is a detailed medium-sized dungeon on par with the best zones from the other games, and it has great bosses that tie into their environment. But there's also a lot of optional in-between content out in the world which is just very short, samey dungeons with a random boss at the end, some of which are copy-pasted with slight variations. I've only fought one of the eight or so "main" bosses so far, so I'm hoping that the areas surrounding them are as good as the first castle, but much of what I've seen since then has been a lot weaker. I've mainly been doing side-quests and randomly exploring though. I'll update my opinion on this when I beat the game in maybe 60 more hours.

Exploring is unfortunately very easy because your horse is so fast that combat is always optional. Though a fix to this wouldn't be as simple as removing the horse, because slogging through hundreds of the same enemies and walking across the entire map would also get boring.

They've also balanced ranged attacks better than in any other Souls game here. Previously if you made a ranged build, it felt like you weren't really playing the game properly as most bosses just don't deal with range very well and could be cheesed, but here they've all got ranged moves which are actually fun to fight against. Different enemies and bosses are all optimally killed with different tools, so there's more reason to have variety in your build, rather than just using the weapon with the highest-damage R1 you can find and only switching things up out of boredom. And that variety is really needed in a game this long.

Another thing I wanted to mention is that the dragon fights are incredible. Way different to any other bosses in the series. All the unique bosses I've fought so far also look fantastic and are really fun to fight. They're probably the best in the series, not counting the bosses from Sekiro with its more complex combat system.

Regarding co-op, I think it's a good thing that they kept the janky old system because the game still isn't really designed to be played fully in co-op. All fights become much easier with a partner and some bosses are completely trivialised. It also kind of detracts from the atmosphere when you have a friend with you. These games do a really good job of making you feel like you're alone in a very large, hostile world where everything is bigger and stronger than you, and co-op diminishes that feeling. That said though, I did really enjoy doing those short bits of exploration with Chev and Beak and plan to do more, but I wouldn't want to play the whole game like that even if there was an option to do it seamlessly.
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Re: PC|XS|PS5|ONE|PS4 Elden Ring

Unread postby icycalm » 23 Jan 2023 10:35

If Hidetaka Miyazaki is such a genius...
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comment ... h_a_genius

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WindUpShoe wrote:Yeah, but only in Morrowind will you get actual directions instead of quest markers, which eventually leads you to hopping between mountains and swimming around the whole damn island to find this goddamn refugee whose name you already forgot. Check and mate.


desolation0 wrote:For a lot of folks Morrowind with weighty, skillful combat and modern graphics is the dream game. Many of them didn't want to bother putting together a mod package for Morrowind.


Has a point, in that Bethesda games always have shit combat.

magvadis wrote:Dark medieval fantasy game with vague lore#1023748927

How could Morrowind steal from Gothic?


Point is that the entire "Dark medieval fantasy game with vague lore" trope is shit. The only reason everything is vague is because programmers can't write for shit.
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