Borderlands THC + Sludge Life FREE on Epic Games May 28th + FREE Mystery Game June 4th

[Paul Rudd]

Borderlands THC FREE on Epic Games Steam Link.

 

Mystery game on June 4th. Since all other rumor leaks have come true, it should be ARK Survival Evolved.

 

Sludge Life FREE on Epic Games

[JZStudios]

Can I seriously ask, why do people like ARK? It's jank as fuck and grindy as hell. I don't think I'll ever understand these games that just have no purpose. Subnautica at least had forward progression to be made. Minecraft lets you make pretty much anything, but all ARK does is act jank, suck online, and have no real end goal. It just makes me think of the WOW people that "finish" the game by obtaining everything and then realizing they wasted their life.

[Paul Rudd]

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Can I seriously ask, why do people like ARK?

Not sure exactly. Dinosaurs?

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

It's jank as fuck and grindy as hell.

Has it been through any patches/updates for the jank? Most survival games can be pretty grindy. It's survival so a grind is realistic in a way.

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I don't think I'll ever understand these games that just have no purpose.

Well, games can start out as projects and the people that develop them can feel that other people may enjoy what they've created.

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

all ARK does is act jank, suck online, and have no real end goal. It just makes me think of the WOW people that "finish" the game by obtaining everything and then realizing they wasted their life.

It's all about the ride I guess. I've never owned ARK and only played it many years ago at a friends house for like an hour.

 

If it's anything like 7 Days To Die, then it's all about the ride. 7D2D is addictive as can be because of the crafting and the upgrade system has been altered and tweaked so much, it's pretty much spot on. Plus the environments and graphics have been overhauled to meet modern day standards.

 

IIRC, ARK's environment seemed pretty good looking. I do remember the frame rate not being too well optimized.

[JZStudios]

2 hours ago, Polemical said:

Has it been through any patches/updates for the jank? Most survival games can be pretty grindy. It's survival so a grind is realistic in a way.

Well, games can start out as projects and the people that develop them can feel that other people may enjoy what they've created.

It's all about the ride I guess. I've never owned ARK and only played it many years ago at a friends house for like an hour.

 

If it's anything like 7 Days To Die, then it's all about the ride. 7D2D is addictive as can be because of the crafting and the upgrade system has been altered and tweaked so much, it's pretty much spot on. Plus the environments and graphics have been overhauled to meet modern day standards.

 

IIRC, ARK's environment seemed pretty good looking. I do remember the frame rate not being too well optimized.

Pretty sure the game is no longer in Early Access, yet all the dinosaurs still don't have any freaking bounding boxes and just clip through everything. I guess I shouldn't expect Monster Hunter World, but hell even Far Cry and GTAV are better. As to the grind, no, it's not particularly realistic. I think the only game I've seen do it in a realistic way is Green Hell. Otherwise it's just vacuous amounts of materials for no discernible reason, like a level 1 shirt only needing 5 cotton, but a level 10 shirt needing 100.

 

2 hours ago, Polemical said:

Well, games can start out as projects and the people that develop them can feel that other people may enjoy what they've created.

My initial impression of the reveal trailers for Ark was A. It would be a much more polished final product, and B. It would have an amount of story or progression, like Subnautica. It's almost set up like it is, but then completely ignored. At best there's big boss creatures you can fight, but then... that's it I guess? I don't really think there's any reason or point in doing so.

 

2 hours ago, Polemical said:

Plus the environments and graphics have been overhauled to meet modern day standards.

This is your version of meeting today's standards? It looks straight out of Garry's Mod.

I don't know. Neither interest me, but 7DTD has a very small amount of purpose.

[Paul Rudd]

17 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

This is your version of meeting today's standards? It looks straight out of Garry's Mod.

Have you played it? It's gorgeous.

[Guest]

Tbh I don't know how I feel about Borderlands being free. I did buy it a while back on the microsoft store because there was what seemed like a pretty good sale, but for some reason it wouldn't let me install the game so I never got to play it. 

[Tristerin]

Ark was most fun at release, when no one knew how to play and UFC fights occurred everywhere.  Then if you grinded out enough to get a flying mount and saddle...Batman.

[trevb0t]

42 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Ark was most fun at release, when no one knew how to play and UFC fights occurred everywhere.  Then if you grinded out enough to get a flying mount and saddle...Batman.

A lot of these survivals are knee jerks toward the original Day Z mod. Most are super playable and pretty fun!

I like the simplistic impossibility that is Don't Starve!

[Paul Rudd]

3 hours ago, itswillum said:

Tbh I don't know how I feel about Borderlands being free. I did buy it a while back on the microsoft store because there was what seemed like a pretty good sale, but for some reason it wouldn't let me install the game so I never got to play it. 

I bought it too but rarely play it. I need to though because I really enjoy Borderlands DLC.

[JZStudios]

1 hour ago, Polemical said:

I bought it too but rarely play it. I need to though because I really enjoy Borderlands DLC.

I've just always hated the sloppy cel-shading and low res textures. Same deal with the tell-tale games, that sketchy outline on everything is just... eugh. Borderlands 2 actually has some edges baked into the textures, and then applies the cel shading on top. I don't know why people like it, and then there's things like Guilty Gear Xrd which look great.

[Paul Rudd]

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I don't know why people like it

The vibrant colors! Something I'm a sucker for. My main love for Borderlands comes from elemental damage to enemies. Watching them go up in flames, acid, electricity or explosion never gets old because you get to be precise with your shots from a sniper or revolver and watch em' squirm in agony.

 

That's a nice screenshot, is that the name of the game, Guilty Gear Xrd? Reminds me of Ni No Kuni II, which I need to play more.

[JZStudios]

4 hours ago, Polemical said:

The vibrant colors! Something I'm a sucker for. My main love for Borderlands comes from elemental damage to enemies. Watching them go up in flames, acid, electricity or explosion never gets old because you get to be precise with your shots from a sniper or revolver and watch em' squirm in agony.

 

That's a nice screenshot, is that the name of the game, Guilty Gear Xrd? Reminds me of Ni No Kuni II, which I need to play more.

I've never seen Borderlands as being particularly vibrant when the vast majority of landscapes are a monotone grey. I'm sure they play fine, I just hate how they look.

 

Yeah, Guilty Gear is a fighting game that's been around for a while. The batshit crazy names should clue you in to it being primarily Japanese. I only know it exists because I got one for the PSP from... somewhere. Ni No Kuni is another one that does the cel shading right and it looks really good.

[trevb0t]

On 5/29/2020 at 6:21 PM, JZStudios said:

I've never seen Borderlands as being particularly vibrant when the vast majority of landscapes are a monotone grey. I'm sure they play fine, I just hate how they look.

 

Yeah, Guilty Gear is a fighting game that's been around for a while. The batshit crazy names should clue you in to it being primarily Japanese. I only know it exists because I got one for the PSP from... somewhere. Ni No Kuni is another one that does the cel shading right and it looks really good.

Ni No Kuni is what's called "toon shading," Which may be why you like the look more. If you want cell shading think Jetset Radio Future. 

[JZStudios]

4 hours ago, trevb0t said:

Ni No Kuni is what's called "toon shading," Which may be why you like the look more. If you want cell shading think Jetset Radio Future. 

It's literally the same thing. At best the only difference is whether or not it has black outlines. It's called cel shading because it mimics the old hand drawn cartoon style that was done on acetate cel sheets. The basic premise is you do the outline, and then do solid fills of paint. That's your character sheet, then you overlay that onto a background. This is why a lot of older cartoons you'll see body parts have slightly different colors and stay stationary. They'll either be painted into the background, or their own sheet and had a slightly different paint mix. As digital art programs became more common and used it switched over to "tradigital" where they do essentially the same thing, just in an art program. This is how all modern 2d cartoons and anime are done. Some still use watercolor backgrounds, but there's digital watercolor programs that are getting pretty impressive too.

 

Point being, toon shading and cel shading are different names for the same thing.

 

Literally the only difference is the thickness of the outlines, of which yeah, I prefer the thinner edges in Ni No Kuni. It's possible that because Jetset Radio was on the PS2 and Dreamcast that the thicker outlines were more of a necessity than an intended stylistic choice just due to the low pixel resolution.

There's also some things like Dragon Quest 8, which... might have slight cel shading, but it seems mostly like it's pretty much not shadowed and all the detail is just baked into the textures. It also still holds up.

[TVwazhere]

On 5/28/2020 at 8:10 PM, JZStudios said:

Can I seriously ask, why do people like ARK? It's jank as fuck and grindy as hell. I don't think I'll ever understand these games that just have no purpose. Subnautica at least had forward progression to be made. Minecraft lets you make pretty much anything, but all ARK does is act jank, suck online, and have no real end goal.

There actually is an ending, similar to how there's an ending to Minecraft.

Like Minecraft, it's also highly moddable so you can overcome the grindiness of it and just have fun building or fighting dinos. The only real downside to this game is up-keeping your dinos, as the server time advances even if no one is on, so dinos can starve to death. 

[JZStudios]

6 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

There actually is an ending, similar to how there's an ending to Minecraft.

Like Minecraft, it's also highly moddable so you can overcome the grindiness of it and just have fun building or fighting dinos. The only real downside to this game is up-keeping your dinos, as the server time advances even if no one is on, so dinos can starve to death. 

I'm certainly not watching 3 hours of that, but it doesn't visually look like much of an ending. I have no idea what the "ending" of Minecraft is, nor do I care because the "story" was never a big feature or selling point.

[TVwazhere]

12 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I'm certainly not watching 3 hours of that, but it doesn't visually look like much of an ending. I have no idea what the "ending" of Minecraft is, nor do I care because the "story" was never a big feature or selling point.

I've actually watched it at 2x speed (I was pretty bored and had time to kill)