67 - Silent Hill 4

[matt]

That seems like sloppy design. How would one break a solid piece of metal? Maybe the enemies are all a billion degrees Celsius and fighting them melts your crowbar? hahah

[RightClickSaveAs]

A crowbar has gotta be the worst weapon for using that mechanic on!

The only game I can remember where I didn't mind weapons breaking too much was Stalker. It made sense within the game, as all the guns were mass-produced Cold War era relics that had seen a lot of use, and it added to the survival elements.

[gagaplex]

I never really got why people were SO angry with the degrading weapons in System Shock 2. After all, it's supposed to be a game about scavenging and whatnot. But then I played as Navy (the tech guys who repair stuff), so maybe it was easy enough then... still, even if you play as another class, as long as you get some basic repairing capabilities at least, it wasn't that bad. I can't think of any game where I actually felt it really added all that much (@ RightClickSaveAs, in STALKER I didn't mind it, but it didn't add anything in my view; what added to it were the upgrade trees, I feel), but I was never that annoyed with it, either, really.

[matt]

I think my frustration was probably more with the general difficulty of System Shock 2 by today's standards. Plus, I suck really badly at games. I turned on some cheats, but I was still getting my ass handed to me. hahah

In general, I think System Shock 2 has way too many mechanics. I like much cleaner and focused design personally. While adding on mechanics can make a game more interesting, I think sometimes it just creates confusion. While Bioshock Infinite is an infinitely simpler game than System Shock 2, I think it still has too many mechanics. I pretty much didn't buy anything in the store. It seemed completely superfluous.

My two cents anyway. I'm sure a lot of people like to explore all the intricacies of the complex systems, but I suck at games, so I like simpler systems.

[ranger_lennier]

If anyone is looking to get into Fire Emblem, then Fire Emblem: Awakening for the 3DS is a good place to start. It has a casual mode without permadeath. Personally, I think it's too easy when you could get through battles by sacrificing half of your troops. But it would definitely be less frustrating than restarting battles numerous times like I typically do.

[matt]

I've been playing the crap out of Dead Rising 3, and I think weapon damage works well in that game because pretty much every item in the game can be used as a weapon. My worry initially would be that I'd never get to use my favorite weapons, but they have weapon lockers where you can spawn whatever weapons you'd like, so I always go back there and get a bunch of electric staffs, which seem like the best weapon in the game by far - at least that I've used. There are soooo many weapons in the game though.

Anyway, if you have an Xbox One, I think it's the real stand out game. I'll probably do a developer diary about it because it's pretty interesting.