T w e n t y S i d e d
Tonight at 7pm, you can join Chris and I on his Twitch channel as we guide our hapless protagonists from one ill-advised misadventure to another.
I have to make a minor correction: Last week I claimed that the developers designed the game with the intention that Sheva gets the rifle and Chris gets the shotgun. Since we did it the other way, the game was always giving us the wrong ammo. It turns out I was wrong about the cause of this problem.
As it turns out, the game does this no matter what weapons you have. If Sheva breaks open a container, then the game creates ammo for Chris. If Chris opens something, he gets ammo for Sheva. We played for two hours last week, and this behavior was incredibly consistent. I opened countless containers in this play session, but the only time I got shotgun shells was when Chris opened a container.
I guess this is to reinforce the “cooperation” thing the designer is selling us. The problem is that it’s completely undercut by the intolerable inventory. I’m supposed to pick up ammo for Chris and hand it to him. And he’s supposed to collect ammo for me. But you can’t collect ammo for your friend when your inventory is ALREADY FULL.
Your primary weapon takes one slot, and its ammo takes another. But you can’t use that all the time, so you also need to use two more slots for your pistol and its ammo. Your armor takes another slot, because I guess you keep your armor in the pocket of your armor. Great. Now you should probably have at least one grenade for when one of those ridiculous bullet sponges show up.
So your normal, baseline, bare-minimum loadout takes 6 of your 9 slots, leaving you with 3 slots to work with during gameplay. Now you have to contend with the fact that this game has like four different kinds of healing items.Red herb, green herb, healing spray, and “egg”. They don’t stack, but some of them can be combined. Oh, and your bullets don’t stack that much, so sometimes your pistol bullets will overflow and eat another slot during the ebb and flow of shooting and looting.
All of this gets worse if you decide to carry the rifle. The rifle doesn’t get enough ammo for general use, and it’s not really suited for most of the close-quarters fighting you’ll be doing. But once in a while you’ll be in an open area and the rifle is really helpful in those situations. So if you choose to carry the rifle, then you’ll also need a shotgun or SMG to use as a main weapon.
A lot of the time, you’re just not going to have the space to grab that ammo for your friend. I understand what the designer was trying to do, but playtesting ought to have revealed that this system leads to more frustration than cooperation. Instead of each of us looting half the area and trading ammo at the end, we each break open half the containers to find stuff we can’t pick up, then run around and collect from the containers our partner opened. It actually makes the game less cooperative, since we both need to visit every container.
Just… yuck.
I want to make it clear that it’s not all bad. In fact, I’d say the game does an overall good job of fostering cooperation and making it interesting. I like how using healing will heal both people if you’re close together. I like how teammates can save each other if they get swarmed / low on health. I like that the game gives me a way to locate my teammate, but it doesn’t just show them through walls at all times. I think the various doors, bridges, and gates that require teamwork are kinda fun. Fights are really well-balanced for a group of two. We can each cover a couple of entrances, and it’s rare that we end up competing for targets.
Overall, this is a pretty good co-op game. But the way ammo is distributed is horrible. And that’s only horrible because the inventory system sucks.
Footnotes:
[1] Red herb, green herb, healing spray, and “egg”.
Push the Button!
Scenes from Half-Life 2:Episode 2, showing Gordon Freeman being a jerk.
Philosophy of Moderation
The comments on most sites are a sewer of hate, because we're moderating with the wrong goals in mind.
Trashing the Heap
What does it mean when a program crashes, and why does it happen?
A Star is Born
Remember the superhero MMO from 2009? Neither does anyone else. It was dumb. So dumb I was compelled to write this.
Why I Hated Resident Evil 4
Ever wonder how seemingly sane people can hate popular games? It can happen!
I had a blast watching the VOD last week! I especially liked it, because the village was my favourite part of the game (that, and the very first levels). I also recall that my enjoyment sharply dropped after that point. But I don’t remember why…
I also remember having some more comments about the VOD, but it’s been an entire week, so I’ve forgotten them :D
Anyways, looking forward to the stream tonight!
Enjoyment drops because Murder Roaches and enemies start carrying guns.
At least, that’s the best summary I can provide for why my enjoyment drops.
Oh, and Wesker.
Oooh, I don’t remember the Murder Roaches. But I do remember really liking the Wesker scenes :D What can I say – I’m a sucker for Matrix-style fight scenes, and my first exposure to the franchise was a walkthrough I watched of RE4. So a magic ninja with sunglasses seemes completely on-brand for me…
They’re the instant kill bullet sponge bugs encountered a few times late in the game. Their instant kill can be temporarily disabled by blowing off their limbs but they regen pretty quickly. Wesker is fun in RE5 as he’s so deliciously hamming it up with the cartoonish evil. He’s also a lot of fun to play in Mercenaries mode.
+! on loving the VODs, don’t want to make spammy posts but want to send a signal that they are being enjoyed even if some of us can’t show up in person due to timezone differences and work schedules.
FWIW I would also appreciate a YouTube archived version if anyone’s up for uploading that.
I tried to watch today’s although I couldn’t finish it because Twitch’s shitty player made it start over twice and I couldn’t be bothered to find my spot yet again.
Really? For me, it always remembers where I left off – even when switching devices. Maybe it’s because I’m logged into my Twitch account.
I’ll consider it seeing as my YouTube channel is currently abandoned, but I do hope to put new content up there and feel like it would be better to keep it stream-free.
Perhaps I’ll create a “RamblePlays” channel? I’ll contemplate it.
I hate when you have situations where technically you have a choice of a useful option, but your routine amount of available options are so limited as to basically force you into taking what’s useful either 95% of the time or absolutely necessary (your grenade) 5% of the time. It just becomes a trap choice.
Spell memorization in D&D was often one of these situations. Yeah, X is a cool spell, but its likelihood of being cast is pretty remote, so I guess I’ll go with Fireball instead. They mostly got around this with the new spell preparation mechanics in 5th Edition, but there are still a few classes that got shafted hard like the Ranger and Bard. Half of their options (especially the RPing fluff) are neat, but are situational and the amount of spells you know are so limited so its Boring But Practical yet again.
Was fireball even really that good? I thought with D&D you allways wanted the save-or-die spells.
Depends upon the edition and DMing style, but ultimately it’s just an example and the exact spell isn’t important.
In 3.5 (the best edition) Fireball is amazing for being the lowest level AoE spell that deals full damage and it marks the inflection point at which wizards start pulling their weight in combat. Single target save or die spells are medium level and not that great (trash mobs are more efficiently killed by damage spells, anything tough enough to survive a single damage spell also has decent odds of making its save to not die) and the AoE save or dies are quite high level at which point they’re competing with equally powerful effects like meteor swarm and time stop.
Fireball is not very good: evasion lets people roll reflexes to take no damage, fire elementals and red dragons (the most evil of dragons) are immune, you can’t cast it into melee (unless you have Shaped Casting or the warrior has fire immunity), and it takes a valuable slot away that could be used for Haste; the real CL3 MVP.
I think I was 2ndE myself (it has been decades). Wasn’t Sleep lvl 1 and hilariously strong?
Sleep was ridiculously strong at low levels and worthless at high levels.
I admit it’s been a decade since i DMd D&D but…. wasn’t magic missile the one to go to?
Off the top of my head it didn’t do much damage but that “avoids armour” tended to be quite kick ass… then you empowered the thing , and silent spell it…
This sounds like a blind holdover from previous games. The point if the limited slots was really about controlling the player’s stock of healing items, and making them remember and consider puzzle pieces. However, the increased swarms make it easier to regulate healing (I can think of several methods) and limited slots seem antithetical to the way the game expects you to blaze away.
Is it possible at all to slip past the zombies? In most RE games that’s a core design choice, but it seems irrelevant here. It’s important because that helps the limited inventory matter. You can, for instance, drop an extra gun for a healing spray and take a couple hits to solve a puzzle, then use the newly-opened route to get your stuff back. However, here is looks as though you’re expected to blast all the enemies when they aren’t infinitely spawning.
Honestly, I don’t think I ever tried slipping past enemies in this game. I don’t even try doing that often in RE4. The nature of the games just feel attuned to combat. I feel as if I ought to go back and see if there are some sections you can skip past, now. Ultimately, though, I think the intention is to just fight everything because it was an action game at that point, and it’s probably the least dangerous thing to do.
You’re only forced to fight them all (or, at the very least, the larger one, like the Verdugo) in a few areas because the story won’t advance until you do, but technically speaking you can slip past them in the majority of the areas. The problem is, most of the fights happen in cramped spaces, so while you can slip past them if you’re fast enough and good at dodging them with the clunky control system, it’s far more convenient, faster and less annoying to kill them.
In any case, there are a few ammo-conservation techniques. You can shoot an enemy to stagger him and then finish him off with a melee attack, or knife a dropped enemy until he dies before he can get back up (thankfully the knife here doesn’t take up inventory space). You can even combine melee attacks between characters for a more powerful combo finisher. These options even let you attack more than one enemy at once.
I’ve only played a little bit of post-4 Resident Evil, but it really does feel like the gameplay you describe was largely jettisoned in that particular installment and that pre-4 and post-4 RE can almost be thought of as two different series, mechanically.
To be completely fair, modern body armor does actually work on having an insert item in a special pocket of the fabric vest. Said pocket is a odd size (usually 10x12x1″), with effort put in to make them not easily openable while wearing (don’t want to accidentally grab the wrong zipper/velcro), and most critically, not expected to be empty: trying to wear a plate-carrier vest without a plate is like wearing a shoe without a sole, it sags & flops about.
While we’re being fair though, it should be noted that Sheva is pretty clearly not wearing said type of armor, so I don’t know what her excuse is
That may be because Shamus hadn’t bought the body armor for her yet. I know the game shows a lot of your inventory items on your person if you do a close inspection, but I don’t recall how it showcases the body armor, if at all. I’ll keep it in mind for tonight’s stream to look.
I mean, sure, but the game specifically shows the body armor as a separate item that should be worn on top of your current vest. It actually even displays it if you’re wearing the basic costume.
Y’know, I never thought much about this but it’s actually a good point in RE5’s favor. Even in Destiny, with its own hordes of enemies and large environments, I’d find myself getting kill stolen by my friends or vice versa. Somehow RE5 works in such a way that we’re able to work effectively together without our targets frequently crossing over.
Or, perhaps, enemies are also spongey enough so that when we do cross lines of fire, it’s beneficial rather than a waste of bullets.
That could be one of the reasons it’s still a fun co-op game to return to.
I’d like to see a discussion on how to solve some of these gameplay ‘problems’ once and for all.
And my suggestion is a procedurally randomised Resident Evil.
GO! (The speedrunners would hate it).
RE4/5 is ersatz randomisation via Ammo.
See… Resident Evil 4 took what was great about Nintendo & SEGA arcade games, and ran with it. Resident Evil 5’s problem is that it had to take all that wackyness and bend it back in on itself to appeal to the ‘Modern Military Shooter’ Crowd that thought Gears of War was realistic, while also building off the same established formula as RE4. But it also could NOT take on ‘Third Person shooter’ set of conveniences because they are woefully untactical. Where I use the phrase ‘realistic’ in future, please replace with tactical – what a lot of games lack are any sort of pre-planning – they are designed to be reactionary. Like Uncharted. Mostly reactionary ways of taking everything ‘engaging’ about a situation and making it as effortless and hegemonic as possible. Complete opposite would be an RPG like Deus Ex or a complicated fantasy RPG looter. Or a game where looting requires thought – like Thief. Resi has to fit between all of those somehow. That’s not easy.
This is why RE5 comes across as like a weird plate-spinning exercise of various genres. The camera technology is cutting edge, however. ?
Remember, the Xbox crowd think HALO is realistic game about a military-space-jesus despite it coming out in 2001 with guns straight out of a Toy Convention and has dopey colorful aliens in it. Dopey brightly colored aliens that I love to strategically dance with via the medium of Video Game guns. Pew pew. The best Halo… Halo 1, was pure Sci-fi. That’s its magic.
And so Halo Reach was made more Brown. The same Xbox people think Call of Duty is a ‘realistic’ game… simply because they are so used to the abstracted conveniences and wouldn’t dream of trying anything different. Halo and Call of Duty are the Sillicon Implant Boobs of Video games… NOT realistic in the slightest, but enough people have decided not to care that they become the standard of beauty.
Also, one of the most attention-to-detail series in, Metal Gear Solid, had little floating, spinning boxes of Ammo, and goodies that came out when some enemies were defeated (or from MGS2 onwards, do that hilarious little wiggle and shake items when performing a hold-up). Not realistic in the slightest, but ever so slightly tactical. Call of Duty by comparison, waves thinking about Ammo because its gameplay is not about that – it effectively cheats Ammo. Most Halo games can be, and Crysis 1-3 can in a lot of cases be entirely ‘Stealthed-crawled’ around, but some few parts of Halo benefit from spending the resources wisely on harder modes.
Splinter Cell (a more realistic take) had 1. Some spare Ammo on tables + guards which was more like an imaginary sub-inventory. 2. Enough Ammo to begin with for a mission and 3. You are not supposed to get caught in the first place.
I’d have to check exactly how RE5’s Ammo system works – sure a lot of people have done that by now. Usually the ‘best’ systems like that are ones you don’t notice – like how Bioshock’s AI Splicer enemies were programmed to miss its first shots on the player. Or how the XCOM reboot CHEATS in the Player’s favour on normal modes by adding a hidden percentage bonus that makes a massive difference to how the game works and what moves are valid – Literally changes how the game is played and most people never noticed.
Do the “Xbox crowd” and the “Military Shooter Crowd” really think Halo and Gears of War are “realistic”? Who makes up these crowds, and how did you get their POV on the realism of their favored games?
Maybe the marketing people thought that’s what some of their audience thought, but I’d say the problem is really the lack of imagination on the part of the marketing people, rather than some strange defect in a large portion of the gaming audience.
In my experience, when Halo 1 was new, everyone I played with said it was cool and fun, nobody said it was realistic.
Look, we’re talking about ‘Plato’s The Cave Allegory’ version of realism, where the man trapped in a cave thinks the shadow on the wall is the *real* thing because there’s hardly any other context, and would probably later prefer the cave and the shafow to whatever inidentified real thing.
The more ‘graphics’ games got, the more ‘realistic’ people think they are. That’s the hope that people have… right? I just saw the phrase ‘Immersive Sim’ to describe Bioshock today, and while I could describe Bioshock in many different ways – ‘Immersive Sim’ is not one of them – that’s totally a marketing gimmick. Bioshock is about as ‘realistic’ as Resident Evil 4…and maybe Hollow Knight.
So I’m talking about the philosophy of ‘what’s ours is real, and yours is not real’. Or ‘Grandma’s Realism’ – y’know where really old people hate Tolkien/Lord of The Rings, but Tolkien has been around for longer than we have and was influenced by real events like the World Wars. Made ‘fake languages’ that are ‘real’. Fandom is ‘real’.
My point about ‘realism’ and Halo is that the trend in Halo became the need for more ‘Militaristic Verisimilitude’. It’s really weird to take a Starship Troopers knockoff which is hyper-militaristic anyway, and then add WAY more military to it, while cramming the hardcore lore into a cupboard in such a way that it continually threatens to burst out. That’s the problem with modern Halo.
Halo is, to take a Spider-Man villain as an example, a form of ‘Mysterio’s Realism’ – Mysterio taking his skills with illusions to make scenarios that trap people into believing what is happening around them (an alien invasion, a big Monster terrorising the city, a foreign invasion etc etc)… until it is found out to be fake.
“Immersive sim” isn’t really a “marketing” term. It’s a holdout from the old days. The original immersive sim was Ultima Underworld in 1992, followed closely by System Shock in ’93. The term immersive sim was used to describe their gameplay, which focused on a lot of simulationist stuff that was pretty radical at the time. You had stuff like dialog, hacking, inventory management, stealth, and open-ended non-linear environments. That doesn’t sound like a big deal today, but compared to contemporaries (Wolfenstein 3D and Doom) these titles were indeed very immersive.
The term has followed the genre through the years because that’s how the fans identify the games, even if the term sounds a little weird today.
For the full lineage, there’s this:
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=52511
People speedrun Minecraft, which is about as procedurally randomized as you can get, so I don’t think that would be an obstacle. (People will speedrun anything, I’ve learned.)
So here’s a completely un-intuitive take…
Is it easier to swap guns before you open a container, so it has the ammo in it for guns the person would normally use, but aren’t in the person’s inventory because you swapped?
Actually, could you deliberately control exactly what ammo you get in a container by carrying ever weapon EXCEPT the one with the ammo you want?
It’s not always the wrong ammo (Chris runs into a lot of rifle drops), and switching weapons would also involve swapping any leftover ammo, so you’re looking at 2 inventory transfers in order to maybe save one slot needing to be open. So far, seems to be easier to just have both people run past all the boxes.
It’s interesting to see that as much as this game is designed to be co-op its inventory system is only manageable if you’re playing solo. Yeah, you still do get a few issues with it, as I’ve complained before in my critique of the game, but here you’re basically allowed to use your partner as a carrying mule. Give them all the ammo you can’t carry but make sure they don’t have any gun that can use it, so they don’t waste it. Plus, if you change your partner’s AI behavior to “cover” rather than “attack” they won’t be wasting so much ammo anyway.
Pretty sure the animations where your Twitch puppets open their mouth when you’re talking are switched.
I’ll have to double check but when we’re streaming the timing is accurate. I can see the image pops up before we even stream, and Shamus’ is invisible until he is in the Discord channel. It could be that the audio goes out of sync in the Twitch player, which is an issue I’ve run into.
It’s not about sync. Your puppet talks when Shamus is talking, and vice-versa. The lengths match perfectly, just not with the right person.
I just started watching last night’s stream, and I remembered the burning question I had last week! It’s been eating at me for days! Is the “h” in “herb” silent or not? It bothers me, because “erb” sounds like something a British person would say. Yet I’ve always heard them pronounce it as “herb”. Meanwhile, most Americans I’ve heard say “erb”, including Chris. However, Shamus switches between the two seemingly at random.
So which one is the correct American pronunciation – “erb” or “herb”?
Ha!
You are correct. ‘erb without an H is correct in the USA, and WITH an H is correct in the UK, even though this feels backwards. Here is a video about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDR5j30spfI
As usual, it’s the fault of the French.
A few years ago it started to bug me that we dropped the H on this ONE word. It also bugs me because we pronounce the H when Herb is a name. An exception to the exception! So I started pronouncing the H because it’s fun and it feels more correct.
HOWEVER – I should not do this when I’m speaking in public, like on a stream. People won’t realize I’m deliberately flouting the rule. It’ll just sound like I’m a dum-dum. So I try to switch back to no-h when recording, but sometimes I forget.
Thanks for clarifying! Also, thank you for showing me this channel! I just saw a really interesting gnocchi recipe he does.
FWIW, I don’t think you should switch. Learning the differences between American and British English is hard enough, and I for one would appreciate it if we non-natives had one less word to memorise. We need natives like you, willing to fight the good fight :D
On an unrelated note, I JUST NOTICED THAT MY NAME IN THIS THREAD IS LINEN! WTF? How long has it been like that?!? How long have I been living a lie under a false name?
Having lived a few years in Australia, I find myself a bit self-conscious about dropping the H in herbs even now that I’m back in the US.
You have experienced English at it’s best. Don’t start backsliding now.